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GENEALOGY COLJ_ECTION
ALLEN COUNTY P^PLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 03082 8344
THE HARDYS OF BARBON
THE
HARDYS OF BARBON
AND SOME OTHER WESTMORLAND
STATESMEN : THEIR KITH
KIN AND CHILDER
BY
CHARLES FREDERICK HARDY
EDITOR OF " BENENDEN LKTTEKS "
Hail, ancient Manners ! sure defence,
Where they survive, of -wholesome laws ;
Remnants of love -whose modest sense
Thus into narro-w rootn -withdra-ws ;
Hail, usages of pristine mouldy
And ye that guard them. Mountains old !
Wordsworth.
LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD.
1913
" II est de ces hommes aux quels rien d'humain ne
demeure etranger. Poursuivre des recherches dans un
but donne et rencontrer, ce faisant, des nouveaux sujets
d'etude, c'est ainsi que cet humaniste se plait k orner
ses loisirs." — D. B.-B.
M
PREFACE U 35G.1 i>
OVED by a very trifling occasion some thirty
years ago I set out to discover what connection,
if any, existed between my ancestors in the male line
and a certain coat of arms. The enquiry soon resolved
itself into the tracing upwards of a pedigree which our
oldest family traditions carried no further back than
the latter part of the eighteenth century, and in the
result gave a fairly decided answer — in the negative —
\ to the question of armorial bearings. But at the same
time it revealed unexpectedly an outhne of family
history going back to early Tudor times ; and this, put
into the shape of a pedigree with bare references to
dates and authorities and a few explanatory notes,
was printed privately in 1888 as a matter of purely
family interest.
In the course of many subsequent rambles over the
same ground various clues came to light, suggesting
further researches into topics of less hmited interest
than mere genealogy; and the present work, being
the fruit of these researches, is naturally of a somewhat
rambhng character. One object, however, has been
kept in view throughout, though doubtless followed
with only questionable constancy: to illustrate in actual
detail the hves and hmited surroundings of the people
vi Preface
who form a continuous chain in the pedigree, such
surroundings being common to them and their con-
temporary kith and kin, but for the most part hidden
in obscurity.
To the great stream of history —
Where sages, heroes, kings of every dime,
Whelmed in the too strong depths of current time,
Neath the slow-rolling waters tranquil sleep —
the Httle backwater of Westmorland has yielded but
a tiny tribute of humanity, and dark are the caverns
and recesses into which have filtered down the small
fragments of mortality whose existence it is here
sought to clothe with a semblance of life.
But, to change the metaphor, it is but a tame
expedition where the route is always in full view of
the explorer. In the pursuit of the traces of a family
whose origin is unknown at the start, the profit and
the enjoyment of the enterprise depend much upon
the difficulties encountered and the unexpectedness of
the result, as each one is attacked or circumvented.
For I would ask the reader to bear in mind that in
the main the course of the following chapters is the
reverse of that in which the actual work was done.
The story, which opens amidst the echoes of the
Border warfare and ends in the precincts of the City
of London, half smothered by the smoke and dust of
the advancing nineteenth century, was, in fact,
traced from a beginning in the folios of Hasted, Mait-
land, and the rest of their topographical brethren, in
Preface vii
an atmosphere redolent of leather bindings, and
followed onwards through many a dreary and stuffy
register office, till it emerged amidst the dales, the
becks, and the inspiring air of the Westmorland fells.
Even here one is reluctant to abandon the pursuit,
for the question of coat-armour is perhaps the only
thing finally disposed of. If we could but go a little
further back, should we not be able to hook on to a
Plantagenet beheaded for high treason, or to a notorious
moss-trooper who was more successful than some of
his fellows in robbing the Scots of their sheep and
oxen ?
But what I regret is not the want of personal dis-
tinction in our ancestry. Far from it : obscurity itself
may be a virtue. What I do lament, to change the
metaphor once more, is that, as a sportsman, I cannot
impart to the reader the exhilaration of the chase,
known to those alone who have picked up the scent
of the game on the ground itself, and have followed it
up hill and down dale ; now running easily across the
open, now painfully struggling through coppice and
undergrowth, and now with map and compass noting
one's bearings and the features of the country, or
leisurely taking stock of the day's bag. For, after all,
it is but to a display of dead specimens that the reader
is invited ; and if he complains that they are nothing
but skin and bone, and commonplace at that, I can
but reply that some pains have gone to their selection ;
that the skins, though stuffed, are absolutely genuine,
and that the skeletons are fitted together bone by
viii Preface
bone as nearly as possible as they were before dis-
section. In the backgrounds and attempts at simu-
lating the habitat of the fauna, where the naturalist
is most liable to err, I have preferred to be fragmentary
rather than misleading. Opportunities for romance
I have left to the reader's own discretion ; and, as for
sentiment, let me say once for all that this little book
is offered as a pious tribute to the virtues of my
ancestors and the Good Old Times.
It remains for me to add that though I have en-
deavoured to cite as accurately as possible the ultimate
authority for every statement of fact in the text, I have
not always arrived at my authorities without friendly
assistance in several quarters. Lord Shuttleworth
kindly placed at my disposal a valuable resume of the
references to Barbon Manor gathered from the Public
Records, and other useful information relating to
places and local families has been given me by Mrs.
Moore of Grimeshill, Miss Margaret Gibson, and the
Rev. James Harrison. My account of the Kirkburton
branch of the family would have been impossible
without the full information supplied me by Mrs.
Frances Collins from her transcript of the parish
registers subsequent to the period of her second
volume. Mr. Herbert Knocker made a long search
for the information I wanted from the records of
Sevenoaks School, and similar help has been given by
Mr. Freeman with reference to the books of the
Carpenters' Company, and by Mr. P. W. Evans, f.s.a.,
with reference to those of the Clothworkers. All the
Preface ix
details derived from the records of the Archbishop
of Canterbury are due to the Rev. Claude Jenkins,
librarian at Lambeth Palace, and to Mr. Frank Peile
several items from the manuscripts of the late Dr.
Peile, master and historian of Christ's College, Cam-
bridge. To all of these I tender my renewed thanks
for their kindness and courtesy.
Last, but by no means least, I must mention my
friend Mr. Edward Conder, f.s.a., not only for his
constant readiness to check and supplement my
searches in the Kirkby Lonsdale registers by reference
to his own transcript, but also for numerous hints and
suggestions on kindred topics, to say nothing of the
enjoyment which his lively interest in such matters
has added to my labours.
CONTENTS
PAGB
Preface ......... v
PART I
OUR TOPIC IN GENERAL
CHAPTER I
KiRKBY Lonsdale, Barbon, and the Statesmen — Parish
registers and wills — Family history — The Hardys of
1 538-1 5 74 — Westmorland Statesmen — Border tenure —
Border service — Crown manors — Barbon manor — Flodden
Field — Barbon beacon — James I's attack on the States-
men — Litigation between lords and tenants — Enfranchise-
ment of the tenants ....... 3
CHAPTER II
The Statesman at Home in the Sixteenth and Seven-
teenth Centuries — Wills and inventories — The States-
man's dwelling — General arrangement — The house, fire,
food, furniture, sleeping apartments, clothes, candles, arks,
etc 15
CHAPTER III
Some Typical Wills and Inventories — James Hardy of
Casterton (1594) — His son Richard (1605) — Widow Agnes
Hardy of Barbon (1605) . . . . . .21
CHAPTER IV
Illustrations from Wills, etc. (i 550-1 650) — Parish poor-
box — Prayers for the dead — Parson's invitation to his
funeral — i3arbon chapel — Bridges — Arms and armour —
Joint occupation of the homestead — Sharing a hat — The
grammar school — A bachelor's legacies — A weaver on a
small scale — Earth to earth burial — The chapel and the
poor — Committee for choosing a husband — Heirlooms —
Church seats settled by will — A crowner's quest — A scape-
grace son — The death's part of an estate .... 29
xii Contents
CHAPTER V
PAGE
Hardys who may have been, and Hardys who were
NOT, Westmorland Statesmen — Offshoots from Barbon
families — Remoteness of Barbon from Traffic — Other
Hardys — The name — Wessex Hardys — Gathorne Hardy . 39
CHAPTER VI
Roland Hardy — Beckfoot and Terry Bank — The Stockdales
— Sale of Terry Bank to the Conders — Devolution of the
Beckfoot state ........ 46
PART II
OUR PEDIGREE
CHAPTER I
First Generation : Edmund Hardy (d. 1571) — His ancestors
— Connection with Roland Hardy . . . • -57
CHAPTER II
Second Generation : Anthony Hardy (1561-1610)
— Ehzabeth Middleton of Lupton — Middletons of Middle-
ton Hall — Royalists in Kirkby Lonsdale — Wilson, Ward,
Beck, Bouskell, Sir Philip Musgrave, Sir John Otway—
Middleton Hall — Middleton pedigree — Musgrave pedigree
— Ahce Plantagenet — Richard Plantagenet, Earl of
Cambridge .......•• 60
CHAPTER III
Third Generation : William Hardy, Senior (1608-1682)
— His wardrobe in detail — Early handwriting — A retired
statesman ......... 7^
CHAPTER IV
The Hearth-Tax Return for 1670 — Houses and individuals
identified in the Kirkby Lonsdale townships ... 75
CHAPTER V
Fourth Generation : Thomas and Edward Hardy
(1643-1710) — A dealer in cloth, stockings, and horses — A
hundred-guinea inventory ...... 79
Contents xiii
CHAPTER VI
PACB
Fifth Generation : Children of Edward Hardy — An
epoch ......... 83
§ I. William Hardy of Park House (1680-1763)
Marriage — Park House — Wilson of Dallam Tower — Return to
Barbon — Enfranchisement — Sale of the Beckfoot state
— Ingleton ......... 84
§2. John Hardy of Kirkburton and his descendants
(1G88-1871)
Village schoolmaster and curate — An absentee vicar — A worthy
parson, the Rev. Joseph Briggs — The curate founds a local
family — Devolution of Birksgate — Thomas Hardy, tanner
— Thomas Hardy, gentleman — Thomas Hardy, Esq., j. p. . 99
§3. Thomas Hardy of Mirfteld (i 683-1 739) 109
CHAPTER VII
The Statesmen, their Schools, and the Church — Extra-
ordinary number of ancient grammar schools in Westmor-
land — Their origin and decay due to the character and
disappearance of the Statesmen — Younger sons of States-
men as schoolmasters and clergymen — Kirkby Lonsdale
school — The Statesman-breed in Otway and Hogarth . 1 11
CHAPTER VIII
Sixth Generation, Division I : Children of William
Hardy OF Park House . . . . . .118
§ I . Thomas and John Hardy of Leadenhall Street
and their children (1716-1804)
John Hardy, musician and hardwareman — The great fire in
the City— Thomas Hard}', carpenter and hardwareman —
St. Peter's, Cornhill — Mrs. Christian Hardy — A downfall . 120
§2. Joseph Hardy of Sutton Valence (i 723-1 786)
At Christ's College, Cambridge — At Sutton Valence — The
Briggs family — The old school-house — A specimen pluraUst 127
§3. Edward Hardy (iji^-iygd)
Marriage — Assistant master of Sevenoaks School — The Curteis
family — A warming-pan at Sevenoaks — Archiepiscopal
patronage ......... 134
CHAPTER IX
Sixth Generation, Division II : Children of Thomas
Hardy of Mirfield (1719-1779) — WilUam Hardy, rector
of Eastwell — John Hardy of Bridge Place — His catalogue of
cousins ......... 140
xiv Contends
CHAPTER X
PAGE
Seventh Generation: Children of Joseph Hardy
(1751-1832) — Infant mortality — Mrs. Kingsley — Joseph,
chaplain at Knole — George's youthful marriage — Enters the
Excise Office — Dies in harness . . . . .143
CHAPTER XI
Eighth Generation : § i. George Hardy and his Children
(1789-1892) — Northern city suburbs in 1788 — The Curtain
and Holywell Mount — Ditchside — The old Artillery ground
— George Street, Bethnal Green — Hoxton Square — Norton
Folgate — A garden wall — Spitalfields and the Lonsdale
Magazine ......... 147
§2. Stray Cousins
Henry J. Hardy — Chrissy Kingsley . . . . .159
APPENDIX I
Poor Householders of Barbon, 1605 . . . . .160
APPENDIX II
The Hearth-Tax lists for Middleton, Barbon, and Casterton,
1670, with modern populations ..... 161
APPENDIX III
Tenants of Barbon manor in 1718 . . . . .164
APPENDIX IV
Grandchildren of George Hardy of the Excise Office . .166
Index .......... 167
ILLUSTRATIONS
Southern part of the map of Westmorland, with the borders of
Lancashire and Yorkshire (from Jan Blaeu's Geography,
Amsterdam. i648)* ..... Frontispiece
Outline plan of a typical Statesman's Dwelling . . page 17
FACING PACK
The Pack-horse Bridge at Barbon-beck-foot (from a drawing
by Laurence Hairdy after a watercolour by Florence Hardy) 46
Chart Pedigree ........ 56
View of Park House, Tunstall, Lancashire, from the north-
west (from a recent photograph) ..... 84
Plan of Park House ........ 87
Tunstall Church (from an original drawing by Laurence Hardy) 92
Sutton Valence School and Almshouses in the early part of
the nineteenth century (from an old woodcut) . .130
Houses in Spittal Square, Norton Folgate (from an original
drawing by Laurence Hardy). The window-bars and the
hood over the doorway on the right are here restored by
the artist 154
* This map is a copy of that in Speed's Theatre of the Empire of
Great Britain, 1611. It is on the same scale, but better engraved
and coloured by hand. It reproduces the following errors made by
Speed's engraver in copying the names from Saxton's map of 1577,
which is on a smaller scale : Burton for Burros (i.e. Over Burrow
and Nether Burrow), where the Leek joins the Lune ; Kirkby
Landall for Kirkby Launsdale ; and Leek for Leke (i.e. Leek).
Otherwise all three maps are practically identical. Sleelmere is
Saxton's error for Sledmere. Blaeu's text is a Dutch translation
from Camden's Britannia.
PART I
OUR TOPIC IN GENERAL
Now understonde,
To Westmerlande,
Which is my heritage,
I wyll you bryng
The Nut-brown Maid
THE HARDYS OF
BARBON
CHAPTER I
KIRKBY LONSDALE, BARBON, AND THE STATESMEN
THE extreme south-eastern corner of Westmor-
land, bounded on the east by Yorkshire and
the south by Lancashire, is occupied by the parish of
Kirkby Lonsdale, which extends more than ten miles
from north to south and varies between three and six
miles from east to west. The river Lune, running with
many bends, mainly in a direction almost due south,
divides it into two unequal parts, emerging at the
southern end from a valley, bordered by hills which
at some points on the east approach an altitude of
2000 feet, into a comparatively level country about
fifteen miles north-east of Lancaster. At this end of
the valley, above a wooded cliff, which here forms the
right or south-western bank of the river, stands Kirkby
Lonsdale itself, " the church town of the dale of
Lune." The whole parish is divided into nine town-
ships, of which six, including Kirkby Lonsdale, are
upon the right or west bank, and three are on the
east. Of these three Middleton lies on the north,
3
4 Kirkby Lonsdale, Barbon, and the Statesmen
Casterton on the south, and Barbon between the two.
Opposite Barbon, on the other side of the river, is
Mansergh.
Kirkby Lonsdale, the name of which indicates a
Danish or Norwegian origin, possesses an interesting
church of which considerable portions are of the
Norman period ; but in the other townships, which
are now independent ecclesiastical districts, there were
formerly no places of worship but small chapels of
ease dependent on the mother church. Consequently,
though some of these chapels, including that at Barbon,
existed as early as the Reformation, only those more
remotely placed had a licence for sacraments, mar-
riages, and burials ; and the inhabitants of the others,
including Barbon and both its neighbours on the left
bank of Lune, necessarily went for these purposes to
the church at Kirkby.
Thus, as pointed out by Mr. Edward Conder, f.s.a.,*
the parish registers preserved at Kirkby Lonsdale, in-
cluding transcripts of the entries at the licenced chapels,
comprise the baptisms, marriages, and burials in the
whole of the parish from 1538 to 1812. These records,
which are the earliest source of any detailed informa-
tion about our ancestors, are, compared with those of
most other parishes, unusually complete and well pre-
served ; and, excepting the Commonwealth, there are
only two or three periods of a few years during which
entries have not been made with fair regularity.
It appears from the frequency with which the name
of Hardy occurs amongst the earliest entries that the
* The Kirkby Lonsdale Parish Registers (Transactions of the
Cumberland and Westmorland A ntiquarian and ArchcBological Society,
Vol. V, new series, p. 214).
Parish Rei^istcrs 5
stock must have been settled in the neighbourhood for
many generations before the year 1538. In the earhest
registers the name is spelt in the northern form,
" Hardie," or rarely " Harde," and later it becomes
Hardye or Hardy. Going back from the year 1574 to
the commencement of the registers in 1538 or a little
earlier, which, allowing for two gaps in the registers of
four years each, is a period of about thirty years, we
hnd, with the additional evidence of the wills, in-
ventories, etc., in the Richmond Archdeaconry Court,
at least forty-two children were born to at least nine
almost contemporary Hardys, namely : Peter, Leo-
nard, Stephen, Roland, John, Edmund, Thomas,
Richard, and James. The third entry in the register
of baptisms is William Hardy, son of Leonard, on
December 13, 1538. Places of residence are not
mentioned during the first hundred years, but from
later entries and the Richmond records it seems that
all the above branches belonged to Barbon, except
James and perhaps Richard. James, who was of
Casterton, seems to have been the youngest of the
series, being married in 1574 and dying in 1596.
The Hardys of Barbon belonged to the class of
yeomen or, as they are called in Westmorland, " states-
men," living upon the small " states " which were culti-
vated by the same family from generation to genera-
tion, and were held by the pecuhar tenure known as
Border Tenant-right. This is a species of customary
freehold, and seems originally and more correctly to
have been called tenancy by the custom of tenant-
right. The tenant could sell or dispose of the land
like ordinary freehold, and on his death, in default of
a will, it descended according to the ordinary rules
6 Kirkby Lonsdale, Barbon, and the Statesmen
of descent, except that in case of female heirs, instead
of all the sisters succeeding together in equal shares,
the eldest took to the exclusion of the others. Another
peculiarity was that the " widow-right " was not
limited to one-third of the income like ordinary dower,
but extended in most cases to a half or the whole,
according to the custom of the various manors. The
lord of the manor, however, had certain rights in the
property, of which the fixed annual rent of little
more than nominal amount was the least important.
On a change of tenancy by death or alienation the
new tenant had to be formally admitted by the lord
and to pay him a fine equal to so many years " old "
rent, and on the death of the lord his successor was
entitled to a similar fine. The amount of these fines
was no doubt originally arbitrary, and, only in the
course of time and after a good deal of dispute, came
to be fixed by custom and so recognised by law as
three years of " old " rent on a charge of tenant and two
years on the death of the lord.* The earliest record
I have found stating specifically the amount of a fine
in Barbon manor is in 1598, when nine years' rent at
2s. 5d. a year was paid to Sir Richard Shuttleworth,
the lord of the manor, in respect of the " tenement "
of John Hardy, t The timber and " ramel " (smaller
growths) were at the disposal of the tenant for re-
pairing buildings and fencing, but he could not sell
* Order in Chancer}^ 1619, referred to below. The " old " rent
being a fixed amount in money, became in course of time of scarcely
more than nominal value.
^}ShuUleworth Accounts, 15S2-1621 (Chethani Society), p. 121.
We shall have further mention of this John Hardy below. He is
the only tenant at Barbon whose name I find given in the Shuttle-
worth Accounts as printed.
Border Tenure 7
them or use them off his estate, nor for building on the
estate unless the building was reasonably suitable for
it.*
Another feature by which the Border tenure was
distinguished was the liability of the tenant's wife on
succeeding to her widow-right. She paid no fine, but
the lord was entitled to seize the best beast on the
property " in the name of a heriot." This at first may
seem somewhat out of place, but it was in origin
particularly appropriate, as will be seen when it has
been explained what Border tenure further involved.
The heriot was originally the military equipment
furnished by the lord to the more humble class of
tenant to enable him to perform his military duties,
and as the widow was not capable of these services she
naturally had to return on her husband's death the
military equipment, or what there was left of it — or
rather what there was supposed to be left of it ; for
in later times it had probably never been furnished
at all ; or, if furnished, the horse would have come to
be represented by the leather into which his hide had
been converted, and the arms by pieces of old iron.
Hence the claim most frequently took the form of the
tenant's best horse, and if he had not even a decent
saddle-horse, the best beast of any other kind was
substituted. Although the women of the Border did
not bear arms, they undoubtedly took an active part
in the labour of the farm even as late as the end of
the eighteenth century, t
* W. H. Heelis, Barony of Kendal, etc. (Cumberland Association
for Advancement of Literature and Science, Vol. IV, p. 104).
t Hodgson, Westmorland as it Was [Lonsdale Magazine, Vol. Ill) ;
Adam Pringle, Report on tJie Agriculture of Northumberland, etc.
(1797)-
8 Kirkby Lonsdale, Barbon, and the Statesmen
The peculiar appropriateness of the widow's heriot
to Border tenure is seen in the mihtary service which
was annexed to it, and which continued a reahty in
the district adjoining the Scottish frontier long after
it had sunk into desuetude elsewhere. According to
this condition the tenants aged between i6 and 60
were " to be at all times in their most defensible array
for the wars, ready to serve their prince upon horse-
back and foot at the West Borders of England for
annempst [=for anent=as against] Scotland at their
own proper charges, so to be ready night and day at
the commandment of the Lord Warden of the West
Marches for the time, being warned thereunto by
beacon-fire, post, or proclamation, and so there to
continue during the Lord Warden's pleasure." *
Border service was an obhgation due in a certain
sense directly to the Crown itself, but the other
manorial burdens, the rents, fines, and heriots, were
due entirely to the lord of the manor, although the
lord, in the case at least of that part of Westmorland
which comprised Barbon, might theoretically be the
Crown's tenant in right of a certain share, vested in
the Crown, of the ancient barony of Kendal. In some
cases, however, the Crown had retained the manor in
its own hands, and was therefore immediately and
solely entitled to the benefit of the manorial dues ;
but of the numerous manors in Kirkby Lonsdale,
* This full description of Border service occurs in a Parliamentary
survey of a moiety of the Barony of Kendal, " heretofore part
of the possessions of Charles Stuart, deceased, in right of the Crown,"
dated March i8, 1 650-1 (Exchequer Augmentation Office Records :
Westmorland, No. 6), but the customs are stated to the same effect
in the surveys of 1572 and 1574 quoted by Nicolson and Burn
(Westmorland, Vol. I, pp. 45-7), and in the Chancery Order of Octo-
ber 28, 1 61 9 (Ibid., pp. 51 e/ sqq.).
Barbon Manor 9
corresponding for the most part with the townships
into which the parish was divided, two only, Casterton
and Hutton Roof, were in this position. Barbon, in
the time of Edward III, was held by the family of
Lascelles. According to Nicolson and Burn it passed
subsequently (when is not known) to the Vaughans,
who sold it about thirty years later to John Middleton,
of Middleton Hall, who soon after sold it to Sir Richard
Shuttleworth, of Gawthorpe, in Lancashire, Chief
Justice of the Chester Palatine Court, who died in
1599, and from whose brother is descended Lord
Shuttleworth, the present owner.* It belonged to
Sir Richard at least as early as 1588, as appears from
the remarkable series of Steward's Accounts of that
family published by the Chetham Society, f In
December of that year twenty pence was the one-third
share contributed by him to the cost apparently of
repairing the village street, and ten shillings were
* Hist. Westm. and Ctimb., Vol. I, pp. 243 et sqq. It is there stated
that it was the subject of a settlement by the Vaughan family in
the 23rd year of Elizabeth (15S0-1), which would make the sale to
Middleton about 15S1-1611. The authors also make the owner in
1770 the grand-nephew of the judge, whereas he was in fact the
judge's great-great-great-great-grand-nephcw (see the history of
the family by Harland annexed to the Shuiileivorth Accounts, re-
ferred to below). They have apparently confused John Middleton,
who died in 1626, with his grandfather of the same name, who died
in 1580 (see Visitation pedigree of 1G64 and Richmond Archdeaconry
Wills), and who no doubt sold Barbon to Sir Richard. For 150
years after the latter's death it was held in succession by five Richard
Shuttle worths, who made confusion worse confounded. The essen-
tial error is probably the date of the Vaughan settlement, which, if
it really dealt with Barbon, was probably dated the second or third
of Ehzabeth.
t They are comprised in Vols. XXXV. XLI, XLIII, and XLVI
of the Society's pubUcations, and . edited by John Harland,
F.S.A.
lo Kirkby Lonsdale, Barbon, and the Statesmen
allowed by him to his agents for the cost of holding
the manor court. Numerous other entries occur from
time to time, from which it appears that the quit rent
paid to the Crown as feudal superior was thirty
shillings each half-year. A considerable income seems
to have been derived from the estate, including free-
holders' and other tenants' rents, Barbon mill, the
park, the sheep-pasture, and the sale of timber, but
there is no mention of a manor house. Sir Richard
was then deeply engaged in the erection of the great
mansion at Gawthorpe which was completed by his
successor. Thus we find such entries as in October,
1588, sixpence paid for getting a letter from Hornby
to Barbon, and two shillings to a man for bringing a
buck from Barbon to Smithills, a residence of the
Shuttleworths while Gawthorpe was being built.
Again in June, 1591, eighteenpence was paid " to
Noddall for his pains for coming from Barbon to
Smithills." Both the Noddalls and the Otways, one
of whom, Geoffrey, was the bailiff at Barbon, were
families of local stock and, we may remark in passing,
connected with the Hardys by marriage.
Of the Border and its warfare so much has been
written and is well known that very little need be said
here. Considering the remoteness of Lonsdale from
the usual scenes of conflict, it may well be thought
that our ancestors were not often called upon to ex-
change the plough-share for the bill or bow. It is not,
however, unlikely that some of them took part in
1513 in the woeful defeat of the Scots at Flodden,
which was indeed rather a national than a Border
battle. The old ballad supposed to have been written
out by a schoolmaster at Ingleton in Yorkshire,
Border Warfare li
named Guy, about lifty years after the event, records
how
" The right hand wing with all his rout
The lusty Lord Dacres did lead ;
With him the bowcs of Kendal stout
With n\iikwhite coats and crosses red ;
All Keswick eke and Cockermouth,
And all the Copcland craggy hills,
All Westmorland both north and south,
Whose weapons were great weighty bills."
Kirkby Lonsdale was, in fact, almost, if not quite,
at the extremity of the Border district, and the
existence of Border tenant-right in certain manors
immediately south of Westmorland has been remarked
upon as something contrary to the general notion of
its limits.* Nevertheless, if the statesmen of Barbon
were seldom called upon to join an expedition to the
Debatable Land, they had to be prepared to take up
arms when the signal was given, and to perform the
duties of watch and ward. The Barbon beacon, of
which traces are said to remain, f seems to have been
Hghted on the spot marked on the Ordnance maps
as " Castle Knot-Barkin," on the steep ridge running
along the north-west side of Barbon (or Barkin) Dale,
Though not visible from Barbon itself, it commands
some very distant views, especially over the Lune
Valley, and down as far as Lancaster, and over
Morecambe Bay.
* J. R. Ford, Customary Tenant-right and the Manors of Yealand
(Trans. Ctinib. and Westm. Ant. Society, Vol. IX, new series, p. 14O).
t Harland, Shtittleworth Accounts (Chetham Society), p. 427.
According to IMr. Howard Pease (Lord Wardois of the Marches
(1913), pp. 45, 167) there were apparently no regular Border
musters in Kirkby Lonsdale, but there was an established beacon
as far south as Farleton Knot (sec Frontispiece).
1 2 Kirkby Lonsdale, Barbon, and the Statesmen
On the union of the Crowns of England and Scotland
in 1603 Border service became, or rather tended to
become, obsolete ; and King James seized the oppor-
tunity of attempting to confiscate his tenants' property
in the Crown manors of Westmorland by denying the
legality of tenant-right apart from the obligation of
service in hostilities, which he proclaimed were now
a thing of the past. Litigation in Chancery between
Charles, then Prince of Wales, on whom the King had
bestowed the Crown rights, was compromised in 1619
under an order of the court by a payment of £2700 to
the Prince, in consideration of which the tenants' full
customary titles were admitted. This naturally en-
couraged the lords of some of the other manors to
take up a similar position, but the tenants met and
resolved to act together and resist a outrance. A
proclamation by the King purporting to put an end
to their rights was followed by another meeting and
more emphatic protests. Proceedings on the part of
the lords were then commenced in the Star Chamber.
These were prolonged for some years, and at length
the matter was referred for argument before Lord Lee,
the High Treasurer, and Sir Henry Hobart, Chief
Justice of the Common Pleas. Their decision was
entirely in favour of the legality of the tenants' claim,
as founded upon a valid custom and not depending
upon the continuance of Border service.*
This result, one is inclined to suspect, was due not
altogether to legal considerations. The statesmen
showed a spirit of staunch resistance and a hearty
determination to stick together, of which we can find
* The history of this memorable dispute is given in full by
Nicolson and Burn, Westmorland, Vol. I, pp. ^x et sqq.
Lords and Tenants 1 3
no evidence on the part of the lords. In fact, judging
from the length of time over which the litigation was
prolonged, it seems that they must have proceeded
in a hesitating and half-hearted way, and that those
who really desired to oust their tenants were but a
small minority — amongst whom, we may add, we see
no trace of the lord of the manor of Barbon. Most of
the lords, seeing to what lengths the statesmen were
prepared to carry their resistance, were probably by
no means desirous of a decision in their own favour.
King James, in encouraging the lords as he did, had
no doubt some notion of obtaining an indirect benefit
out of their success, and it is noteworthy that it was
not till after his death that the judges' decision was
pronounced.
Thus in parts of the Border counties, Northumber-
land, Durham, Cumberland, and Westmorland, the
old customary tenure exists to this day, while in
others it has been converted into freehold pure and
simple, or into freehold subject to a fixed annual quit
rent. In the case of Barbon the thirty-eight customary
tenants, by a deed dated January 17, 1717-8, ac-
quired the freehold subject to various quit rents,
amounting in all to £15 4s. 2d. per annum, in con-
sideration of a capital sum of £1700, for which the
Richard Shuttleworth of that day also relinquished
to them all his exclusive rights in the Barbon com
mill.* As the demesne lands which he retained con-
sisted mainly of a park without a mansion house, the
lord of the manor was very little in evidence at Barbon
for the next hundred and fity years or thereabouts, at
* I am indebted to the Rev. James Harrison, Vicar of Barbon,
for the use of a transcript of this deed made by him from the original.
14 Kirkby Lonsdale, Barbon, and the Statesmen
the end of which period the present house of Barbon
Manor was built high upon the steep side of the hill
looking down the Lune into Lancashire. In the mean-
time Barbon has not been without its squire. There
has been a Gibson of Whelprigg for considerably more
than two hundred years, and the records of the family
in the neighbourhood may be found some centuries
earUer still.
CHAPTER II
THE STATESMAN AT HOME IN THE SIXTEENTH AND
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
WE will now try to realise something of the
personal circumstances of our statesmen-
ancestors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Our chief material for this is found in the wills and
the inventories of chattels preserved in the Richmond
Archdeaconry Court, which enable us not only to
understand pretty clearly their family arrangements
as to the disposal of their property, but also throw
many curious sidelights upon their mode of life.
Of the Hardys of our own particular branch — the
" Edmond-Antony " branch, as we may call it* — no
wills or inventories are now extant of earlier date than
1676. That there were no younger sons to specially
provide for would probably be a sufficient reason for
not making a will, but allowing the law to take its
course ; and perhaps no inventory was called for by
the ecclesiastical court, which looked after the chattels,
when they were of very little value. It seems not
unlikely that both these circumstances attended the
earliest generations of our pedigree. On the other
hand, it is possible that such documents, though they
* Or should we spell it Edmtmd-Ant/iony ? But, as our ancestors
themselves could not answer this question, I claim liberty to leave
it open.
15
1 6 The Statesman at Home
once existed, have been lost in the various changes of
custody which the Archdeaconry records underwent
before reaching their present resting-place at Somerset
House. To this day they have never been transcribed
into a register, but exist only in their original state
of authenticity, written necessarily upon separate
pieces of paper of various shapes and sizes, occa-
sionally somewhat decayed and mutilated, but rarely
to such an extent as to render more than a few words
here and there illegible. The occurrence of words now
only recognisable in the dialects, living or dead, of
Scotland and the Border is perhaps the chief difficulty
about them to one versed only in ordinary English.
In the absence then of any personal records of
Edmond and Anthony of Barbon we will make use
of those which have been left by their kith and kin,
and our extracts from these may be usefully prefaced
by an attempt to explain certain features of the ancient
mode of hfe in the dales as we see it reflected in the
still remaining habitations and the traditions recorded
before the old state of things had completely passed
away.*
Let us present first a typical outline plan of the
statesman's dwelling.
The house, or as we should call it in modern phrase,
the " living-room," is the primitive apartment which
* My authorities for what follows on this topic are " Westmor-
land as it Was, from the Rev. Mr. Hodgson's topographical and
historical description," printed with notes by J. Briggs in the Lonsdale
Magazine, Vol. Ill (1822), and reprinted in his Remains ; The Old
Manorial Halls of Westmorland and Ciimberland, by Dr. M. W.
Taylor, published by the Cumberland and Westmorland Anti-
quarian and Archaeological Society ; and S. O. Addy's Evolution of
the English House. For uncouth words I have consulted the New
English and the English Dialect Dictionaries.
The Statesman's Divelling
17
once constituted the entire dwelling, and which de-
veloped later into the baronial hall. To this the
chamber for the private occupation of the master and
mistress was the first addition. The relative positions
of the chamber and dairy were decided by the warmer
and colder aspects. The down-house or cellar (which
latter word originally had no underground significance
and only meant a store-place) is the next offshoot,
and was used for the rougher operations of indoor
\
\
/
B
C
House.
k. Dairy.
Down-house
or
Cel/ar.
1
A
H
1
/ Chamber.
A B C D forms the "house-fire."
H is the hearth.
Aim. is the almerie or aumbry, a large cupboard for food, etc.
work, such as washing and brewing, as well as har-
bouring things belonging to the farm, fuel, etc. This
would be the place for the kitchen in a manor house,
but in a typical statesman's dwelling most if not all
of the cooking would be done in the house-fire. In
some dwellings the mell-doors (the passage or place
" midst the doors ") is merged in the down-house.
Entering the house, we pass on our right, extending
from A to B, the heck, a partition reaching to the
ceihng. On the other side of this is a long fixed seat
1 8 The Statesman at Home
with receptacles under it, and perhaps an oven next
the end wall. On the opposite side of the hearth is
probably a large oak chest, wonderfully carved, and
a sconce (or high-backed settle) which can be drawn
out and placed opposite the hearth and thus snugly
shut in the house-fire (or ingle-nook), nearly meeting
a beam which runs across the ceiling along the hue
BC just above it.
The fire is of wood, roots, bracken, or peat, not
placed in a recess, but laid on the open hearth. Across
the chimney above it is fixed a heavy beam called the
rannel-balk or rannel-tree, from which hangs the
racken-crook (literally chain-hook), a chain furnished
with a pot-hook, which can be moved from link to
link as the brass pot is to be raised or lowered over
the fire. On the hearth are the tongs, perhaps a
creshet (fire-basket), but invariably a girdle (griddle)
and a brandreth for making bread and cakes. The
girdle is a flat circular piece of iron with a handle,
and the brandreth is a trivet which may support
girdle, pot, or kettle over or near the fire.
The bread and cakes as well as the porridge are of
oatmeal. Wheat is a great rarity and only used for
" arval (inheritance-feast) bread " in the ceremony of
funerals, and perhaps at Christmas. The other grain
met with is bigg, otherwise beer-barley, which, as the
name imphes, is a large kind of barley chiefly used for
brewing. The bread and cakes stored in the aumbry,
the great cupboard of carved oak at the end of the
house and, it may be, built into the wall* opposite the
* Mr. Harrison has a specimen from a house in the adjoining
dale of Dent, which could only be removed from the wall, which it
partly supported, by sawing it in two.
Domestic Ar7'aiiQ^emcnts 19
fire, will keep good for months. If the family are not
to subsist mainly on oatmeal and cheese the house
should be well hung overhead, except in summer,
with salted beef or mutton, for the dalesman cannot
fatten his stock for killing in the winter.
Along the middle of the house is the board, the oaken
table at which the entire household take their meals,
seated for the most part alongside it on a pair of
wooden forms. The master and his family eat and
drink from a service of pewter, the servants from
wood-vessell,* consisting of trenchers and " piggins,"
otherwise " skeels," little half -barrels with handles
formed by prolonging one of the staves upwards.
The upper floor is reached by a ladder or stair
within or in the neighbourhood of the chamber, and
consists of a long garret. In the older houses this did
not extend over the down-house, which was open to
the roof. In this garret slept the children and servants,
the sexes at opposite ends with a curtain between them,
and in early times with little or no bedding to lie upon
but straw and harden sheets. An increase of refine-
ment would gradually lead to a solid subdivision of
this floor into separate apartments. Of bedsteads we
find no mention in our early inventories. These were
for people of wealth with four posts and a tester, but
the statesman at best seems to have possessed a few
pairs of " bedstocks." These were simply the head
and foot pieces made of solid oak, perhaps ornamented
with carving, and were connected by the bedstaves
of lighter wood which carried the bedding.
The statesman had not only his food, but also his
clothing from the produce of his estate. His doublet,
* Apparently a collective singular like the French vaisselle.
20 The Statesman at Home
breeches, and stockings were of native fleece, literally
homespun, and woven by the village weaver. His
shirt was harden, a cloth made of fine hemp or coarse
flax, which had to be " battled " on a stone to reduce
its harshness. The women's clothes were of finer stufl
woven into a kind of serge, and, like the men's, made
up at their own fireside by themselves or a travelling
tailor. Shoes and clogs were made at home in the
same way.
Candles were of peeled rushes dipped in tallow or
preferably hot bacon-fat. The candlestick was an
upright pole fixed in a log and perforated at intervals
so as to raise or lower the candle, which was fixed on
a piece of iron fitting into the holes and supporting
ordinary tallow candles in a socket, and rush-lights by
means of a kind of pincers.
The arks and chests in which clothes, food, and
other things were kept were of solid oak, put together
with wooden pegs in place of nails, and, hke the other
oak furniture, would last for generations. Some of
these chests of the period from 1650 to 1720, very
elaborately carved, have come down to modern times
and have changed hands at high prices.
CHAPTER III
SOME TYPICAL WILLS AND INVENTORIES
LET US now take the record of James Hardy of
^ Casterton as a type of the Lonsdale statesman
in fairly flourishing circumstances. The registers at
Kirkby Lonsdale give his marriage to Isabel Glover
(an old Barbon family name) on July 15, 1554, and
his burial on September 22, 1596. The contents of his
will, which is dated December 11, 1594, and which may
also be regarded as a type, is to the effect following :
" My body to be buried in Kirkby Lonsdale church-
yard. Richard, my eldest son, to have the title and
tenant-right of my tenement, to him and his heirs for
ever, after the death of my wife Isabella ; she to possess
during her widowhood half my said tenement.*
"As to chattels, my wife to be at no charge out of
her thirds [i.e. her legal one-third share], but the
whole charge for duties, etc., to be made and done out
of the two-thirds, and the remainder of the said two-
* This, it is clear from contemporary statements in other wills,
was according to the custom of the manor of Barbon. In later times
there seems to have been some uncertainty about it (see J. R. Ford,
Trans. Cumb. and Westm. Ant. Soc, Vol. IX, new series, p. 146).
Nicolson and Burn say that the rule in the Barony of Kendal
which included the manor of Barbon, was for the widow to retain
the whole. This may have been in cases where there were no children.
In other parts of Westmorland they say the rule was a half or a
third. Where the tenure has survived to modern times, the whole
seems to be generally recognised as the right (W. H. Heehs, Cumb.
Soc. Advt. Lit., etc.. Vol. IV, p. 89 ; G. Gatey, ibid., XI, i).
21
22 Some Typical Wills and Inventories
thirds to be equally divided amongst my four [younger]
children, John, Edward, Ahce, and Joan.
" To Edward I give an almerie ; to Joan one great
chest standing in the cellar ; to John one other great
chest standing in the house-fire.
" Richard is to pay to John and Edward ' for
agreement of my tenement ' [i.e. as their portion
charged on the land] 5 marks [;^3 6s. 8d.] apiece ;
that is, 5 marks when he hath taken one crop of the
first half-tenement, and 5 marks ' when it shall please
God he doth enter the whole ' [i.e. on his mother's
death or marriage].
" To Richard I give the bed he now hath in his
possession and the sconce in the house after the widow-
hood of my wife ; also after her widowhood ' one
culter, one team and . , . tugwyddyd.' [These are
parts of the plough-gear. The culter is the front blade
and the team is probably a chain for harnessing the
animals. A ' tug ' is a trace, and wyddyd (or wythyd)
seems to mean bound or furnished with withes. Per-
haps the whole thing was a pair of traces with a collar
or halter of wickerwork, and the same as is called a
pair of ' togwethes ' in another Richmond inventory
quoted in the New English Dictionary under ' team.']
" To each of Richard's children I give 12 pence ;
to each of the children of Edward . . . my son-in-law
[whose wife was presumably dead] 20 pence.
" My wife, to whom I give the rest of my goods, to
be my Executrix ; Robert Townson, Edward Atkinson,
John Jackson, and Leonard Gibson to be Supervisors."
The last two are also witnesses. There are no
signatures by marks or otherwise, except that of John
WilUamson, who was at this time Vicar of Kirkby
James Hardy of Casterton, 1596 23
Lonsdale, and seems to have actually written out the
whole document.
The following is the inventory of the testator's chattels,
as valued on October 9, 1596, by four of his neighbours :
Corn and hay
2 mares .
2 kye [cows]
1 whye [=quey, heifer]
3 young beasts, one calf
2 sheep
Brass pot .
Caldron, 2 kettles, 4 pans
2 candlesticks, i chafer
Pewter
Frying-pan, girdle, brandreth, racken
crook, and i pair of tongs
Ploughs and plough-gear
Wheel [for spinning]
Wood vessell
3 chests .
Bedstocks
Almerie .
Bedding and 5 sacks
Apparel .
3 spades and i axe
Boards, forms, stools, chairs, cars, and
all other husbandry gear
One swine
Hemp
Peats
Pullen [poultry]
Lime and tathe [dung for manure]
Total [apparently wrongly cast]
L
s.
d.
12
2
13
4
3
I
I
2
10
4
9
13
4
3
4
4
4
4
3
4
I
10
9
12
4
6
8
2
8
I
6
8
6
6
8
2
I
10
3
£28 12 8
24 Some Typical Wills and Inventories
The debts due from the testator, varying in amount
from 1 8 pence to 50 shiHings, come altogether to
;^5 15s. iid.
A few of the items in the inventory, such as farm
stock, may be compared with the prices of similar
things recorded about the same time at Gawthorpe
(Lancashire) and other places further south, where
they were generally higher.* Judging from these,
the conclusion one would come to is that the values
here assigned for purposes of administration are
decidedly, if not absurdly, low. And this seems to
apply, generally speaking, throughout the inventories
which I have examined.
Richard Hardy of Casterton, son and heir of James,
died only nine years later than his father, and was
buried at Kirkby Lonsdale, October 5, 1605. His
will is in much the same shape as his father's. He
directs that he shall be buried " with his ancestors,"
and that his tenement shall go to his eldest son James.
To each of his two younger sons, Edward and John,
he gives 10 marks (£6 13s. 4d.), and charges the total
upon the two " grasses " which he has bought for
that price in " the Fell Close." [A grass (also called a
beast-gate) was the right to pasture a beast on a
common or enclosed field. Here it was probably a
stinted pasture field belonging to the lord of the
manor.] If James failed to pay his brothers' legacies
they were to have the grasses subject to their paying
all dues to the King's Majesty for the same. Casterton,
as already explained, was one of the two Crown manors
in Kirkby Lonsdale.
* See the Shuitleworth Accounts (quoted above) and J. E. Thorold
Rogers's Hist, of Agriculture and Prices.
Richard Hardy of Caster ton, 1605 25
Another clause is significant of the careful character
of the testator and also of the scarcity of money
amongst his class. He directs that his son James
(then only about twenty-three years of age) is for four
years to have no benefit from the inheritance but
" meat and clothes according to his state " at the dis-
cretion of four friends, who are named as supervisors,
" because I would have my debts discharged fully
and truly." He gives all his goods, moneys, and
moveables to his wife and daughter.
He appends a hst of his debts, which again contains
a touch or two of character : To William Rondson
(? Ronaldson or Rollinson) £10, to be paid at Candle-
mas next as may appear by a bond ; To the wife*
of Roland Rigg £>, 13s. 4d., to be paid the next
Whitsuntide as may appear by a bill ; To James
Crosfield, of Kirkby Lonsdale, ^4 5s. " in respect of
a bargain of wool, and for other little reckonings I
refer them to his good discretion " ; To Christopher
Harling 9s. ; To William Jackson, "as I should
remember, about the sum of 3s. " ; To Thomas
Garnet, of Casterton, 4s. 6d. " and for one crook [door
hinge] to a house " ; " For any account or reckoning
between William Moore, Nicholas Gibson and myself,
I refer them to their setting down."
This shows a state of indebtedness amounting to
some /20 or more, which may well have made a man
somewhat anxious, the whole of whose goods and
chattels immediately available for the purpose were
valued at £33 i8s., and who had in hand no coin
whatever.
Returning now to Barbon from Casterton, we may
* " Wife " is probably used here as we should use " widow."
26 Some Typical Wills and Inventories
take the will, dated May 28, 1605, of Agnes Hardy,
the widow, it seems, of a son of Peter Hardy, who
heads one of the Barbon branches enumerated in our
first chapter. Although the inventory of her effects
shows that she was carrying on a farm on a largish
scale, this must have been only under her widow-
right ; and consequently her will is entirely concerned
with personal chattels and is rather a curious docu-
ment.
She gives to each of her godchildren I2d. ; to each
of the four children of her son-in-law, Richard Segs-
wicke (Sedgwick) , an ewe and a lamb ; and to each of
her servants, William Garsdale and Helen Whitehead,
a sheep.
Her eldest son John is naturally to have all hus-
bandry gear and all timber, including wheel timber
and other wood, but wood fit for cooper-wood and
cooper- wood already " hagged " (cut in pieces) she
gives to her daughter Elizabeth.
There is then an elaborate distribution of bedstocks
and bedding, chests, brass pots, etc., between the
children John, William, and Elizabeth. John naturally
is to have the racken-crook, tongs, " counter-dish-
board " (probably the prototype of the modern dresser),
and all chairs and stools in the house, but he is to
make his brother William " a new chiste of the best
and largest boordes in the house and furnish the same
with good jemmers [hinges, gimmers] and a locke."
To her daughter Isabel she only gives " the gowne
I left at Ingmyre (in the adjoining parish of Sed-
bergh), if she list to wear it." But she is probably the
same as " Richard Segswicke his wife," who is to have
20 marks (£13 6s. 8d.), and Ingmyre was probably her
Mrs. Arrncs Hardy of Barbon, 1605 27
home. Other gowns, including one given to the
testatrix by her sister Helen, are given to her sisters
Isabel and Elizabeth. Her sister Mabel is to have her
" best linen cross-cloth," her niece Alice Moore a
cross-cloth, a bend (riband or band probably for a
cap), and a pair of gloves. (A cross-cloth was worn
across the forehead under the cap.) She gives to her
" neighbour Edward Baynes wife and Edmond
Hardye wife the one of them a coller and the other a
cross-cloth."* To her niece Jennett Hardy a work-
day hat, a collar, a bend, and a garden smock, and to
a friend Julyen, whose surname is difficult to decipher,
she makes a similar bequest, substituting for the smock
" a pare of shoes of lynsey wolsey." Her daughter
Elizabeth is to have the rest of her attire including
her side-saddle.
She then names nineteen " poor householders of
Barbon," to each of whom she gives half a peck of
bigg. Amongst these is Anthony Hardy, who comes
into our pedigree as the son of Edmond's wife,
who has just been mentix^ned as a legatee. Taking
bigg at 28s. the quarter, the highest price recorded at
Worksop from 1583 to 1603, f half a peck would be
worth something less than 6d., or say half a crown in
modern average value.
The value of the good lady's farm stock and personal
effects (including four silver spoons valued at 13s. 4d.
the set — they must have been large ones, as they were
* Edward Baynes was the scribe who prepared this and many
other of the local wills. Edmond Hardy, whose wife (or, as we should
read it, widow) is here named, is at the head of our Edmond and
Anthony pedigree. Notice the omission of the possessive " s " in
accordance with the local dialect.
t J. E. Thorold Rogers, Hist. Agriculiure. Vol. VI, p. i8.
28 Some Typical Wills and Inventories '
furnished " with rings and crooks," to hang them by,
as I presume) amounted to £^y i8s. 6d., besides
;^20 9s. 3d. in debts, including £14 due on mortgage
from Geoffrey Hardy, who was one of the " poor house-
holders." The scarcity of money in the dales is again
curiously illustrated by the list of the testatrix's
creditors. To William Garsdale she owed £4 15s. 4d.,
besides 56s. for two years' wages, and to her other
servant Helen Whitehead 13s. 4d. To her sister and
three children she owed about 20s. each. With regard
to Garsdale's wages, which seem ridiculous compared
with labour at 5s. a week, the price about 1583-1600,*
it must be assumed he received in addition board and
lodging gratis. He was evidently something more
than a mere servant, for on the death of Agnes Hardy's
eldest son John in 161 1 we find him again mentioned.
John gives him, besides an ewe sheep, two closes of
land and " the chamber he lieth in " for his life,
subject to a nominal yearly rent of 4d., and provides
for his purchasing a share of a cow and a sterk (a
young bull, bullock, or heifer) in which he and the
testator were partners.
* Rogers, Agriculture, Vol. V, p. 826.
CHAPTER IV
ILLUSTRATIVE EXTRACTS FROM WILLS, ETC., I550-165O
H
AVING now dealt with a few cases typical of a
statesman's position as a whole, I will give in
chronological order some short extracts from wills and
inventories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
in order to fill up the picture, as it were, with various
more or less curious details. There are very few
records, perhaps not more than half a dozen, in the
Richmond Archdeaconry collection, dated before the
second half of the sixteenth century, which relate to
Lonsdale. An interesting selection from the records
prior to this period is comprised in Vol. XX\'I of
the Surtees Society's publications, edited by James
Raine, junr. (1853), but they almost without exception
relate to people whose circumstances were very dif-
ferent from those of the Westmorland statesmen.
1 55 1, February 4. — Adam Mydleton of Lupton
gives directions that he is to be buried in " my parish
church of Lonesdall," and bequeaths to " the poor
man's box at the said church 12 pence " ; also to Sir
Robert Applegarth, curate of Kirkby Lonsdale,
3s. 4d., and to Sir Robert Dodshone, clerk, 12 pence,
desiring them in their prayers to " commend my soul to
the mercy of God." It will be noticed that this is in
the reign of Edward VI. The form of probate endorsed
is unusual, being in the name of the King as " Supreme
Head of the Church."
29
30 Illustrative Extracts from Wills, etc.
1567, January 20. — Robert Gibson, parson of
Staveley (near Windermere), is to be buried in his
parish church of Staveley " before myne owine stawU
in the choir." ..." I will that, the day of my
buriall, be geven a penny or half-penny, and all that
offers to have a dyner," One's reluctance to leave
unmentioned the quaint charity of Sir Robert must
be our apology for assuming his connection with
Barbon on the strength of his name of Gibson.
1571, May 20. — Amongst the debts of John Hardy
of Barbon, annexed to the inventory of his effects, are
" The chapel, 25s." and " The bridge, 22s. 4d." This
was probably the pack-horse bridge at Beckfoot,
which we shall refer to later, not the road bridge in
Barbon village, the upper or " over " bridge, for the
amendment of which there is a legacy of 20s. in the
will of Leonard Stockdale, dated in the year 1569,
which we shall also refer to below. In any case, the
expression " over bridge " is an indication of at least
two bridges being at this time in existence. Nor is it
unlikely that the Barbon beck was then also crossed
by a third. Hodge Bridge, as it now actually exists,
probably only dates from the construction of the
present coach-road to Sedbergh, which crosses the
beck half-way between the other two ; but a " Hodge
Brigg " is mentioned in the enfranchisement deed
(already quoted) of 1718. This was probably also a
pack-horse bridge alongside a ford, of which traces
still remain near the spot, and was part of a highway
from Barbon to Hawkin and other houses in that
direction. The coach-road as such was probably
constructed about 1780-90. The earliest evidence of
its existence which I have discovered is a map, No. 67,
Roads; Brid{^es : Arms and Armour 31
in the second volume of Paterson's British Itinerary of
1785, but it is not mentioned in the book itself nor in
any edition of Paterson's Roads before the twelfth
(1799). It is then given as part of the road from
Lancaster to Sedbergh. In the next edition (1803) it
appears as part of the road from London to Kirkby
Stephen, which had hitherto been by a rather longer
route through Kendal. The original way up our side
of the dale must have been more or less along the line
of the higher road from Casterton which passes through
Barbon village.
If the mention of the " over bridge " in Leonard
Stockdale's will points to a respectable antiquity, it
is probably but modern compared with the still
surviving pack-horse bridge at Beckfoot, or with the
bridge across the Lune near the end of the three or
four miles of road which lie between Barbon and
Kirkby itself. Than this bridge there is no work of
man in Lonsdale more worthy of the surrounding
loveliness of which Nature in that valley has been
lavish. As its origin goes back no one knows how far
beyond the Edwardian age, so may it be that no one
will ever know the end of its days !
1573, March 17. — The will of Agnes Bouskell,
widow of Giles Bouskell of Casterton, contains a be-
quest to the son of one of her friends of " one jacke
[leather jacket], one salet [a kind of helmet], with a
tow [two]-handyd sworde." Besides this the only
mention of arms or armour I have discovered amongst
the Lonsdale statesmen is in an undated inventory,
apparently of about the year 1600, of the goods of
Thomas Bouskell of Barbon. This contains his sword
and dagger, valued at los., with his saddle and bridle
32 Illustrative Extracts from Wills, etc.
at 4s. The Bouskells were connected by marriage
with the Stephen Hardy branch.
1577, June 10. — Matthew Stockdale of Barbon,
brother of Leonard, already mentioned, directs that
his wife and his eldest son William Stockdale shall have
all his lands during the widowhood of his wife, and
" if they cannot agree to dwell together, which God
forbid," they are to abide the award of four of their
nearest friends as to a division. The three younger
sons are given 20 nobles (i^6 13s. 4d.) each, and the
three daughters on marriage £20 each. All the children
are " to have meat and drink and come and go to my
house until such time as they shall come to succour
[means of livelihood]." . . . " To every one of my god-
children whom I have christened a lamb."
1579, March 5. — The inventory of Roland Hardy's
effects seems to indicate some rather complicated
situation under an intestacy, and the difficulty of a
division due to the scarcity of a medium of exchange.
It includes " His part of a chest . . . His part in a
silk hat and other gear ... 3 quarters of seed due
to him of his uncle Robert Hardy and John Hardy
... 10 pecks of bigg seed due to him from the
same."
1586, July 14. — John Mydleton of Lupton directs
his wife and his son Arthur " to dwell together as long
as they can agree ; the house I dwell in to be equally
divided between them, my wife to have the south end."
He gives to the free school of Kirkby Lonsdale 3s. 4d.
His best horse is valued at £4 (a high price), and two
old horses at £1 6s. 8d.
1598, April I. — John Hardy of Barbon, who had
no children and left personal estate of the value of
Divisions; Ftmerals ; Weaving 33
£11^ 9s. 8d., gave to his sister two whyes (heifers) of
the mild sort — neither of the best nor the worst ; to
the inhabitants of Barbon towards maintenance of
God's service at our chapel 40s. ; "to httle Robert
Ustonson when loose of his apprenticeship 3s. 4d." ;
" to Alice my maidservant two ewes ; to each of my
manservants a sheep." This seems to be the John
Hardy in respect of whose tenement Sir Richard
Shuttleworth received, as already mentioned, a fine
of nine years' rent on the change of tenancy by the
tenant's death,
1599, January 11. — The funeral expenses of George
Hardy of Camforth in the neighbouring parish of
Warton, Lancashire, a cousin of the Hardys of Barbon,
amounted to 2id. He is described as a webster
(weaver), and is one of the few instances in these early
wills of a member of the family venturing into business.
But the inventory of his effects, of which the total
value was £8 3s. 4d., shows that he was still partly
dependent on the soil for his livelihood. He had
3 head of cattle, 3 sheep, and poultry, worth £1 os. 4d. ;
barley (at is. per peck), with hay, hemp, etc., worth
£1 4s. lod. ; while his looms and heddles are put down
only at los. However, it seems from later records
that one of his sons continued in the same occupation,
and there are traces of the family at Carnforth as late
as 1720.
In connection with the small sum paid for funeral
expenses, it may be mentioned that in this part of
Westmorland it seems to have been not unfrequent
even at the beginning of the eighteenth century to
bury without a coffin. It is said that the ancient custom
was suppressed by the admonitions of the Rev.
D
34 Illustrative Extracts from Wills, etc.
William Crosby, who was Vicar of Kendal from 1699
to I734-*
1601, May 16. — At the burial of Robert Hardy
the younger of Barbon, whose effects were worth
£60 14s. 8d., but who seems to have left no will, there
were paid 15s. to the chapel, 5s. to the poor of Barbon,
and £l is. 8d, to " the officer and summoner and for
mortuary." The mortuary was a customary gift to
the parish church. The summoner was an officer,
probably of the Archdeaconry Court, who had to find
the person to whom should be entrusted the ad-
ministration of the estate.
1605, May 16. — Peter Hardy of Mansergh, a
township adjoining Barbon, who had no children,
gives his tenement to his niece Jennett Hardy on
condition that " she shall be ruled by her father,
Richard Moore, and Edward Baines, my good friends,
in choosing a husband." To each of his god-children
a lamb ; Christabel his wife to have one cow, viz.
" the brocked [parti-coloured] cow," besides her half
of his goods. " I earnestly request my good landlord,
Mr. Brabyn, not to admit my niece nor him that shall
marry her tenant of my tenement but under the con-
ditions of my will." ..." I will the almerie and the
chist in the sellar shall remain at the house as heir-
looms," my wife to have the use of them during
widowhood.
The niece Jennett was apparently identical with the
niece to whom Mrs. Agnes Hardy bequeathed a work-
day hat and a garden smock. No trace of her marriage
* Manners and Customs of Westynorland, " bj' a Literary Anti-
quarian " [John Gough], reprinted in 1847 from the Kendal Chronicle
of 1812.
Husband CJioosijig : Church Scats 35
appears in the parish registers, which perhaps is not
surprising if she attempted to follow the procedure
laid down in Uncle Peter's will. Mr. John Ward was,
of course, of Rigmaden, where his family had been
seated so far back as the time of Edward III. It is
on the opposite side of the Lune facing Middleton.
1605, January 15. — Edward Midlton of Dcepdalc-
head in the parish of Dent in Yorkshire, immediately
adjoining Barbon, gave by his will to his eldest son
Richard " my man's seat or rowme in the churche,"
and to his daughter " Isabel, Christopher Willan wife,"
and his daughter-in-law SibeU (wife of Richard) two
" woman's rowmes " equally between them, " being
both together in one place or form," Sibell's seat to go
to her son Edward after her death. I venture to think
this testamentary gift of a church seat is somewhat
rare, especially in the will of a simple yeoman. But
it is well known that at this time the appropriation of
seats to families or individuals had become recognised ;*
and one can see in such cases as this, where the same
little property descended from father to son for many
generations, how easily the theory (since sanctioned
by law) might arise, that the right to the seat or pew
must be appurtenant to a certain dwelling in the parish,
and so could be based on prescription without evidence
of its actual origin. The separation of the sexes, a
very ancient custom, was the rule till much later. f
It seems odd that the testator should direct a woman's
seat to be afterwards occupied by her son. Perhaps
there was a system of exchange. XJ.i >Oo X-C
1608, January 20. — Geoffrey Hardy, one of the
* Heales, Hist, and Law of Church Seats, Vol. I, p. loi.
t Ibid.. Vol. I. p. 138.
36 Illustrative Extracts from Wills, etc,
poor householders of Barbon mentioned by Mrs.
Agnes Hardy, apparently died a violent death, as in
his widow's account of her administration she enters :
" For the Crowner 13s. 4d." But it seems the
" crowner 's 'quest " was not occasioned by a case
of suicide, as his burial is entered at Kirkby Lonsdale
in the usual way. His effects were valued at £33 8s. 6d.,
and his debts, including £3 due to our ancestor Anthony
Hardy, another " poor householder," amounted to
£23 2S. He had four children, of whom the eldest
was only twelve years old, and consequently his widow
had to give a bond with two sureties in £40 for their
education, with meat, clothing, etc., during minority.
Geoffrey Stockdale of Barbon, yeoman, one of the
sureties, signs his name in handwriting which looks
extremely respectable amongst the humble marks
affixed by the other parties. The Stockdales, though
cousins of the Hardys, were, as we shall see later,
somewhat their superiors in wealth and station.
The description " yeoman," in fact, implies that he
held his land as an ordinary freeholder.
1608, June 28. — In the will of George Myddleton
of Lupton : " And for my son John, I protest he hath
had his portion sevenfold and more in charges I have
been at for him, and therefore I will assign him no
more portion of my goods."
1618, November 14. — The personal effects of John
MiDDLETON of Aykrigg End, Lupton, amounted to the
large sum of £190 is. 4d., including one item very rare
in the dales, " gold and money, £10," Twelve stone of
wool is valued at £(i, and debts due to the deceased
amount to ;£6i 8s. 4d. He died intestate, leaving a
widow and two sons, and the latter being under age
Gtiardianships : the Dcatlis part 2i7
the widow filed in the ecclesiastical court a carefully
prepared account of her administration. The value
of the personal estate after all deductions, which
include ;^'5 for funeral expenses and los. for mortuary,
is £223 19s. 8d. The division of this balance illus-
trates rather neatly the state of things before the
passing of the statute of Charles II for the distribution
of intestates' effects. Under that Act the personalty
would be divisible equally between the widow and
two sons, notwithstanding that the elder son had
succeeded to the land as heir-at-law. The account
does, in fact, show a division into three equal parts.
One third is retained by the widow ; another third,
less IIS. 8d. for his " tuition " (probably an official
fee), is assigned to the younger son ; and the re-
maining third is called " the deathes parte." This
the widow prays may be divided between her and the
younger son, John, Arthur the elder " being preferred
[advantaged] by land worth ;^20." It seems from an
endorsement on the inventory that this was sanctioned
by the court.
1641, February 4. — John Conder, as appears by
his father's record in 1636, had inherited an unusually
large estate in Kirkby Lonsdale, whence he had
migrated into Ingleton, an adjoining part of York-
shire. His wife had predeceased him, leaving him
three children all under age at his death. In these
circumstances, whether according to feudal principles
or otherwise, the duty of administering the personal
estate was entrusted to the lord of the manor of Ingle-
ton, Mr. Robert Lowther, who gives to the Court a
bond for £400 as security for due administration, his
sureties being Sir John Readman (Redmayne, alias
38 Illustrative Extracts froin Wills, etc.
Redman, lord of the manor of Thornton, which ad-
joins Ingleton) and Mr. John Middleton of Middleton
Hall (lord of the manor of Middleton in Kirkby
Lonsdale). Conder probably had property in all three
manors. The seals on the bond are impressed re-
spectively with six annulets (3, 2, and i), a hand, and
a monogram of J.M.
Robert Lowther, by the arms on his seal, was of a
branch of Lowther of Lowther, a family too well
known to want further mention here. This branch
had held the manor of Ingleton for two or three genera-
tions.* Sir John Redman was the father of Major
John Redman, a staunch royalist, who was the owner
of Thornton Hall when it was blown up by Cromwell,
and whose tomb is in Thornton Church, f The arms
of Redman were gules, three cushions ermine, tasselled
or. J A red hand (whence the seal) was, I presume,
only a badge. The race was an ancient one scattered
widely in these parts. § Of the Middletons of Middleton
Hall we have more to say below. Their arms were
argent, a saltire engrailed sable.
* Balderston, Ingleton, p. 95.
t H. Speight, Craven, etc., p. 264 ; Balderston, Ingleton, p. loi.
+ Bellasis, Westmorland Church Notes, Vol. I, pp. 22 et sqq.
§ See The Redmans of Levens, by W. Greenwood, f.s.a.scot.
CHAPTER V
HARDYS OUTSIDE WESTMORLAND
BEFORE leaving the subject of Barbon families
in general, it may be remarked that such pedi-
grees as can be traced from parish registers and local
wills are necessarily confmcd almost entirely to the
head of the family and his immediate descendants.
In such a primitive state of things as prevailed in
Westmorland in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies — and indeed long after — there was httle or no
scope in one's native place for any expansion or change
of fortune. The history of a family of statesmen is
mainly the history of the descent from generation to
generation of the few paternal acres which formed a
homestead for a single household. To this the eldest
son succeeded, while his brethren received sums of
money which would take them in search of an occupa-
tion, perhaps the same as or perhaps different from that
of their ancestors, into a part of the kingdom which,
though not distant according to our modern notions,
was then practically beyond the reach of all ordinary
communications.
Kirkby Lonsdale, as it seems from the Itinerarium
Anglia:, Ogilby's great route-book with maps and
elaborate descriptions of the principal roads, published
in 1675,* was only accessible by a road which led
* The original title seems to have been Britannia, Volume the
First, etc.
39
40 Hardys Outside Westmorland
nowhere else. He gives no account of this road beyond
mentioning the point at which it branches out of the
main road from Lancaster to Settle and York. By
this branch road, which follows the left bank of the
Lune, Kirkby Lonsdale is eight miles from Hornby or
eighteen from Lancaster. Going in the opposite
direction one leaves the main road at Clapham, whence
the distance is eleven miles, or from Skipton eighteen ;
but this road is not noticed by Ogilby, and was, I
suspect, in his time httle better than a bridle-track
across the moors. Beyond Kirkby the road now
continues in a north-westerly direction to Kendal, a
distance of twelve miles, of which the first eight are
engineered along a winding course over what is still
to a large extent a wild and rugged district of moor and
fell. This road was made under a Turnpike Act of
1753 (26 Geo. H, cap. 86), before which the route
must have been for the most part a mere track for
pack-horses. The Milnthorpe road dates from 1824.
But Barbon lay on the other side of the Lune. To
reach it you would leave the road from Hornby at
Kirkby Lonsdale Bridge, and, \^dthout crossing the
river or going into Kirkby at all, follow for three miles
now a track, now a narrow lane, parallel with the left
bank along the side of Casterton Fell. Beyond this,
that is to the north and east, was the wilderness indeed.
The road from Carlisle to Newcastle is the only one
noticed by Ogilby which would cross a bee-hne of 115
miles drawn from Kirkby Lonsdale to Berwick-on-
Tweed. Even in the hey-day of posting* there was but
one other mail-coach road, that going from Penrith to
Greta Bridge, between our dale and a district which in
* See for instance Paterson's Road Booh of 1824.
Rcmotcncs>s of Upper Lonsdale 41
the middle of the seventeenth century was the happy
hunting-ground of the moss-troopers of the Border.
Thus of the natives who left Barbon to earn their
livelihood elsewhere there must have been few who
did not bid a long farewell to their kith and kin. In
a very few generations the descendants of a man thus
placed out of touch with his home would naturally
lose all trace of their ancient family connections, and
perhaps not the less readily because he had been
favoured by good fortune in his new surroundings.
It may therefore be conjectured that a large number
of the Hardys who have flourished in various parts of
the country, especially in the North of England, arc
descendants of the Barbon or Casterton statesmen —
a race of whose existence they have never heard.
Of course, the name itself is no indication of kinship.
It may have originated independently as a surname
in any number of individuals not living in the same
community. There is the Wessex family, for instance,
of which Admiral Sir Thomas IMasterman Hardy, the
friend of Nelson, and it is also to be supposed the
famous writer, are illustrious members. They were
probably of the same origin as the Hardys of Toller
Welme and elsewhere in Dorsetshire,* whose pedigree
appears in the heralds' visitations of 1565 and 1677,
and whose arms were sable, on a chevron between
three escallops or three wyverns* (or dragons') heads
of the field. There is not the least ground for supposing
that this family had any connection with the North of
England. It is said to be descended from one Clement
* See Hutchins's History of Dorset, Vol. IV. pp. 433 and 502, and
J. Bertrand Payne, Armorial of Jersey. The family became extinct
in the male hne in the eighteenth century.
42 Hardys Outside Westmorland
le Hardi, bailiff of Jersey. This, though resting on
doubtful authority, is not inherently improbable, but
it is worth pointing out that the name is not by any
means to be taken as a necessary indication of French
or Norman origin. As a surname in England, and
distinctly as a family surname (not a mere personal
nickname), it is probably as old as any. It occurs as
such (mainly in the Eastern Counties*) several times
in the Hundred Rolls, a survey of the royal demesnes,
which was made about 1273, but which contains, by
the bye, no record of Westmorland. At this time
family surnames, which were not in use before the
Norman Conquest, had become fairly common, though
not by any means universal ; but the word " hardy,"
though an adaptation from the French, and down to
the fifteenth century commonly written in the French
form " hardi," had been incorporated in the Enghsh
language at least half a century eariier.t It is there-
fore quite unnecessary to suppose that as a name it
was brought into England from France or Normandy
or elsewhere. The spelling in the Hundred Rolls
confirms its English origin. It is far more often
" Hardy " than " Hardi," and the distinctly French
form " le Hardi " does not occur at all.
One of the best-known individuals bearing our
patronymic in modern times was Gathorne Gathorne-
Hardy, first Earl of Cranbrook, whose life has been
written by his son, the Hon. A. E. Gathorne-Hardy.
The latter states that there is a tradition in the family
that they came from Ireland, though he does not seem
to regard it with much faith, and he lays some stress
* Whence comes Sir H. H. Cozcns-Hardy, Master oi the Rolls,
t See the New English Dictionary (Oxford).
IVesscx Hardys ; Lord Cranbrook 43
on the fact that his father knew very Httle of his
ancestry, never having seen his grandfather, John
Hardy, who founded the family fortunes and died in
1806. Beyond this the only facts ascertained arc that
the said John Hardy and his father William (born
1715) were natives of Horsforth, near Leeds, where the
father of William, also named John and described as
a " labourer," was living in 1670.*
Mrs. A. M. W. Stirlingt in her account of the Spencer-
Stanhope family of Cannon Hall and Low Hall, Hors-
forth, gives some confirmation of the Irish tradition.
She states that one John Stanhope, who distinguished
himself by taking the opposite side to his father in
the disputes between King Charles and the Parlia-
ment, went to Ireland, whence he had to fly for his
life in consequence of the rising against the Protestants
in 1641. He was assisted in his flight by a faithful
servant named Thomas Hardy, who, dying at Hors-
forth in 1683, left many descendants in that place.
Amongst them were the above-named William Hardy
(born 1715) and his son John (1745-1806). They were
both in the law and employed by the Stanhopes, and
the latter was their steward at Cannon Hall and
Horsforth. Mrs. Stirling quotes a manuscript of John
Spencer-Stanhope written in 1836. In this the writer,
who knew John Hardy personally as his father's
steward, refers to him as descended from the Irish
servant of one of his ancestors, in devotion to whom
he (the servant) had left his native country.
This Irish tradition is not altogether irreconcilable
* Gathortie Hardy, First Earl of Crafibrook, Vol. I, pp. 9-1 1.
t Annals of a Yorkshire House (191 1), Vol. I, pp. 164-166,
256 ; Vol. II, pp. 75-SC.
44 Hardys Outside Westmorland
with the supposition of a Lonsdale origin. It is
known that at least two of the most important famihes
in Kirkby Lonsdale, the Manserghs of Mansergh Hall
and the Otways of Beckside, about the beginning of
the parliamentary troubles sold their estates and
migrated to Ireland.* Many people of less consequence
probably went with or followed them, and amongst
these may have been one of the Hardys. It is true
this would scarcely agree with Thomas Hardy being
descended from a Lonsdale emigrant and thus a
native of Ireland, as he must have been born at least
ten years before the rising in 1641, and there is no
probability of a migration from Lonsdale earlier than
the regime of Strafford, which began in 1632. We
must therefore suppose he himself migrated to Ireland
not long before 1641, and that the tradition as recorded
in 1836 is slightly in error. A man who was known to
have had a home in Ireland would naturally ^Q,t to
be spoken of as a native.
It is also worth mention as a fact suggestive of
some connection between the remoter Cranbrook
Hardys and Westmorland that the mother of the first
Lord Cranbrook, Isabel, wife of John Hardy, Recorder
of Leeds and M.P. for Bradford, came from a family
resident in Lonsdale for two generations. Her father,
as appears from a tombstone in Kirkby Lonsdale
churchyard, was Richard Gathorne, son of the Rev.
Miles Gathorne, and her sister Eliza was the wife of
John Moore of Grimeshill, the representative through
an ancestress of the Middletons of Middleton Hall, and
a descendant in the male line of one of the oldest
families in the parish. The mother of Richard
* E. Conder, Kirkby Lonsdale Parish Registers.
The Gatho-ntes 45
Gathorne was Isabel Preston of Kirkby Lonsdale,
where she was married to Miles Gathorne, November
8, 1725, and where Richard was baptised August 31,
1729. The entry describes Miles as curate of Kirkby
Lonsdale. Richard Gathorne was buried there May
20, 1786. The family were no doubt connected with
Edward Gathorne of Old Hutton (between Kendal and
Lonsdale), whose daughter, Mrs, Sarah Nicholson,
was buried at Kendal in 1781, aged 71,* and John
Gathorne of Burton-in-Kendal, buried there in 1773,
aged 64.1 The family name is doubtless identical
with that of the manor of Garthorn or Gaythorne Hall
in the Westmorland parish of Crosby Ravensworth,
referred to in 1671 by Sir Daniel Fleming in his
Description of Westmorland as " Gawthorne, a good
house belonging to Allan Bellingham of Over Levens
in this County, Esquire. "J
* E. Bellasis, Westmorland Church Notes, Vol. II, p. 48.
t Ibid., Vol. I, p. 161.
X Printed by the Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Arch.
Soc, p. 24.
CHAPTER VI
ROLAND HARDY
OF the nine contemporary branches of the Hardys,
whom we enumerated at the outset as aheady
planted in Kirkby Lonsdale in the middle of the
sixteenth century, one of the most flourishing seems
to have been the branch of Roland Hardy, who was
baptised as the son of John Hardy on November i8,
1543. He held three " states," or to give them the old
and more correct name, three tenements. That on
which he dwelt was at Beckfoot ; the others were " at
Mansergh Hall " and at Terry Bank, both in Mansergh
township.
Beckfoot, or to be more exact, Barbon-beck-foot,
is the point, as the name implies, at which the Barbon
beck, having descended from the fells on the York-
shire boundary and passed down Barbon dale and
behind the village, reaches the level of the meadows
bordering the Lune, which it soon joins. At this point
the beck is crossed by a ford side by side with the still
remaining pack-horse bridge already mentioned, and
there are also what seem to be traces of the primitive
works once connected with the manorial corn-mill.
This spot, where there are now only two farm-houses
adjoining the north side of the beck, goes by the name
of High Beckfoot, thus distinguishing it from another
spot about half a mile further south called Low Beck-
46
Beckfoot and the old Fords 47
foot, which is near the junction with the Liinc of two
little becks descending from Barbon Low Fell. Here
are now only three or four cottages, but within living
memory there were other buildings, including a mill
and a dwelling-house of considerable size, since removed
in consequence of the enlargement of Undcrley Park.*
Beckfoot, at least in modern parlance, applies to all
the land between these two little hamlets, or, in other
words, to all the land in Barbon township bordering
on the Lune ; but it seems that in 1822 it had come
to belong rather to the lower hamlet as the more
important of the two.f
Before the construction in the latter part of the last
century of the bridges in Underley Park and at Rig-
maden, there were two fords across the Lune which
have since gone out of use ; one just above High
Beckfoot, and the other nearly opposite Low Beckfoot
Cottages, and we may therefore conclude that Roland
Hardy's dwelling was on the site of one of the two
present groups. One might be inclined to prefer High
Beckfoot as the older, but at neither is there any
indication of a building more ancient than the eigh-
teenth century. By crossing the Lune at either
ford a road close along the right bank is reached
running direct into Kirkby Lonsdale, and thus saving
a distance of a mile compared with the route through
Casterton and over Kirkby Lonsdale bridge.
On this direct road, about half-way between the two
fords, is a group of farm-buildings or cottages marking
* Information on this point has been suppUed to me by Mr.
Harrison, who has kindly shown me a plan and particulars dated in
1828, setting out the property at Low Beckfoot and also near High
Beckfoot formerly belonging to his family.
t Map of the County by Greenwood.
48 Roland Hardy
the site of Mansergh Hall, near which was the second
of Roland Hardy's possessions. The third, Terry
(anciently Tyrergh) Bank, is an extent of rising ground
sheltering against the south-west a group of buildings
called Old Town on the old coach road from Kirkby
Lonsdale to Kendal, but reached direct from Mansergh
Hall by an ascent of about a mile along a steep lane
and moorland track.
From some ancient title-deeds, with copies and
extracts from which I have been favoured by Mr.
Conder, it seems that part of the Terry Bank property,
subject to a rent of 3s. gd., had descended to Roland
Hardy from his grandfather and more remote an-
cestors as owners by tenant-right. Other part held by
a rent of 2s. 6d. was acquired by him in 1580 from his
wife's sister, Isabel Allen, she having acquired a
half-share of it from her uncle, James Stockdale, by
deed of February 10, 1577-8, and the other half-share
from her mother or her grandfather, John Stockdale.
Isabel was doubtless the elder sister of Margaret, who
was Roland Hardy's wife.
The Stockdales of Casterton are amongst the half-
dozen which Mr. Conder recognises as the principal
families in Kirkby Lonsdale in the sixteenth century.
The name of Mrs. Stockdale appears as the owner of
land adjoining Mr. Harrison's at Low Beckfoot in the
plan of 1828 already referred to, and in the herald's
visitation of 1615 there is a pedigree of Christopher
Stockdale of Barbon, which, though very imperfect,
purports to show that his ancestors had been in Kirkby
Lonsdale for five generations or more, thus going back
to about 1450. The will of Leonard Stockdale of
Barbon, who died in April or May, 1569, and whose
The Stockaales ; Te^ry Bank 49
sister Jennet was the \\ife of Stephen Hardy, shows
him to have been in possession of a considerable
amount of property and in a superior position to
that of an ordinary statesman. Besides his tenement
in Barbon he had lands in the adjoining parishes of
Dent and Sedbergh, and also in Norfolk and Suffolk,
which latter he gave to his son Christopher, who was
probably identical with the Christopher living in 1615.
To his son George he gave £100, and to his daughter
100 marks (£66 13s. 4d.), and he names Gepffrey
Otway, doubtless identical with Sir Richard Shuttle-
worth's bailiff, as one of his friends to receive rents
and keep accounts for his children. His fortune was
perhaps the result of trading in cloth. There was a
John Stockdale of " Mansergh Hall houses," who died
apparently childless in 1581, and whose estate in-
cluded in book-debts and " cloth lying good and well "
the sum of " £308 or thereabout," equivalent to at
least five times its amount in modern money value.
Roland Hardy, by his will dated July 26, 1588, gave
his Terry Bank and Barbon properties to his eldest
son Robert, who, however, seems to have died without
issue in 1605, and consequently Robert's younger
brother John became the owner. This John, in 1608,
sold his Terry Bank property, or at least the part of
it which he had inherited, to Edward Conder of
Mansergh ; and there was subsequently a deed con-
firming this, in which John Hardy's mother (then the
wife of George Lindsay), George Lindsay himself, and
John's wife Margaret joined, presumably to release
any claim to the property on account of widow-right.
John Hardy was buried December i, 1623, and from
the record of his personal estate in the Richmond
50 Roland Hardy
Archdeaconry Court it seems that he died leaving a
wife but no children, and without making a will.
Moreover, it seems tolerably clear from the parish
registers that all his three brothers who are mentioned
in his father's will died young. Thus on his death,
subject to his wife's widow-right, the title to his landed
property would pass to another branch of his famil}^
It is probable that he had sold the Mansergh Hall
property, but, as appears from the Richmond records,
he was still of Beckfoot when he died, and his wife
remained there till her death in 1635.* It is therefore
not unlikely that the Beckfoot property held by him
is the same as that held, as we shall see later, by the
descendants of Edmund and Anthony Hardy, in whom
we are specially interested, and that they were on his
death (or ultimately) in the eldest male line traced
from the nearest common male ancestor of the two
branches. But of this we shall say more a little later.
It seems also not unlikely that there was a family
connection which led the Conders to purchase from
the Hardys the property at Terry Bank. On January
18, 1 550-1, Richard Conder and Joan Hardy were
married at Kirkby Lonsdale, and the Edward Conder
who bought Terry Bank from John Hardy, and who
had an elder brother, Richard Conder of Hawkrigg,
near Terry Bank, may have been their descendant.
The present Mr. Edward Conder, whom I have fre-
quently quoted as my authority on the subject of the
parish registers, is descended from his namesake the
purchaser of Terry Bank, which he now owns, it having
* It seems doubtful whether she was entitled in these circum-
stances to the whole or only a half of the profits of the holding,
but I incline to think it was the whole (see p. 21, note).
John the Spendthrift of Beck foot 51
passed in the male line without a break ever since.
The present house seems to have been built by the
purciiaser of the land immediately after his acquiring
it in 1608.
On the death of John Hardy above-named it is
recorded that his debts and funeral expenses exceeded
his assets (exclusive, of course, of land) by ^Tio 7s. Gd.,
and we have therefore some reason to look upon him
as something of a spendthrift. His widow Margaret
does not seem to have altogether succeeded in balancing
the account, for we find at her death an inventory
under date January 27, 1635, in which her effects,
indoor and outdoor, are valued at ;^45 7s. 8d. (including
a spinning-wheel, cards, and heckle — 3s.), while her
debts amount to ^^47 i8s. 4d. Amongst her creditors
the only Hardy s are " Anthony Hardie wife "
(i.e. widow) for i8s., and William Hardy for los.
This tends to confirm the suggestion that on the death
of Margaret the title to the Beckfoot property of the
Roland branch passed to the Edmond and Anthony
branch, of which, as we shall soon see, the head was
then William, the son of Anthony.
It is, however, noteworthy that administration of
Margaret Hardy's effects was granted to one " John
Hardy of Barbon-beck-foot, farmer " ; but, as no
relationship is stated in the bond, it may be presumed
either that there was some doubt as to his legitimacy
as the son of John and Margaret, or that he was a
distant relation of the husband's who claimed to be
his heir. For, Margaret's estate being insolvent, the
office of administrator would itself be a thankless
responsibility, while if there was any doubt as to the
heirship it would be of considerable advantage in those
52 Roland Hardy
days — " nine points of the law," says the proverb —
to get into possession of the farm on any pretext, and
defy the other claimants to make out their title.
It is not unlikely therefore that, though the ad-
ministrator's title as heir was a bad one, he may have
held possession for a long time ; and it may have been
not till many years later, if at all, that the Beckfoot
estate of the Roland Hardys came to the descendants
of Edmond and Anthony. On the above supposition
we may identify the administrator with John, baptised
as the son of Robert Hardy, November 15, 1583, and
suppose that the want of any record of his death is to
be put down to the irregularities of the period of the
Civil War and Interregnum ; or if, on the other hand,
his paternity was in question, he may account for an
entry of the baptism on November 23, 1615, of John,
son of John Hardy, which appears to have been
inserted without authority at some later date.
PART II
OUR PEDIGREE
"Ye good Christians, that like swallows and cuckoos
love to change to more sunny hawghs, and now feed on
richer pickings, turn yer thoughts for a minute to the
shaws, the crofts and intacks of the north, to the strea-
thecked cottages which gave ye birth."
A bran new ll'ark by William de Worfat.*
* .-l/ias William of Overthwaite, alias the Rev. William
Hutton, Rector of Beetham from 1762 to tSii. His Bran
new Wark, a tract " on good nebberhood," written in local
dialect, was printed in 1785 and edited for the English
Dialect Society by Professor Skcat in 1879.
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CHAPTER I
FIRST GENERATION : EDMUND HARDY AND
HIS ANCESTORS
THE earliest ancestor with whom we can connect
our pedigree by positive evidence is Edmund
Hardy, whose burial is recorded on October 30, 1571.
He was no doubt bom before 1538, when the registers
begin, and as he died only a few months after the
baptism of his youngest child it may be presumed he
was then comparatively young. His marriage does
not appear. It probably took place in the period
1556-60, for which no records have been preserved.
This would agree with the first recorded of his children's
baptisms, that of Anthony on December 16, 1561.
We do not know his wife's name, but we have already
referred to her as having a cross-cloth bequeathed to
her by the \nll of ]Mrs. Agnes Hardy in 1605, and she
is no doubt identical with " the wife of Edmond
Hardy, widow," whose burial is entered November
15, 1609.
Before passing to the next generation we may state
what seems probable, though not proved, as to the
ancestiy of Edmund and his relationship to the Roland
Hardys.
In the first place should be mentioned a family
custom, which prevailed amongst the statesmen, of
naming one of the sons, and generally the eldest, after
57
58 Edrmtnd Hardy and His Ancestors
his paternal grandfather. Professor Adam Sedgwick, a
famous native of Dent and a descendant of the family
of which we have already named one or two individuals,
speaks of this custom as continuing down to his own
time.* Accordingly we may suppose that the burial
of Antony on December 28, 1544, refers to the father
of Edmund, he being the only Antony in the register
besides Edmund's son. We also find a trace of an
earlier Edmund in the burial of the " wife " of Edmund
Hardy on September 27, 1576. The name of Edmund
being also uncommon in the family, we may probably
suppose he was the brother of the earlier Antony and
the uncle after whom our ancestor, being perhaps not
the first-born of his father, was named.
Antony Hardy the elder would be according to the
probabilities of life contemporary with the grand-
father of Roland Hardy of Beckfoot, who also owned
Terry Bank, and it seems to me very probable that the
two grandfathers were brothers. It seems clear from
various wills and inventories of the Roland branch
that the grandfather of Roland had two brothers,
Robert and John. The latter is probably identical
with John Hardy, who was buried May 21, 1571, and
from whose inventory, dated the previous day, we
have already quoted. He seems to have had only one
son, Roland, who died in 1563, aged six. The inventory
is made by Matthew Stockdale, Edmund Hardy, and
John Hardy. Edmund, according to our theory,
would be his nephew, the son of his brother Antony.
John might be another nephew, either the son of
Robert or an elder son of Antony. In either case he
would fit in as the father of Robert and grandfather of
* Memorial by the Trustees of Cowgill Chapel (i86S), p. 52.
A Qitesttonabie Title
59
John, baptised in 1583, who. as wc have supposed,
claimed the heirship of the Beckfoot property on the
death of Margaret Hardy in 1635.
The father of the five brothers, according to the
grandiatherly custom, would presumably be John,
and the grandfather of Roland would be Roland also.
Thus the pedigree would take the following shape :
[JOHNjy
[ROLAND]=f
Robert
living 1579
Antony =
.1. 1 544
Edmund
(wid. d. 1576)
John
d. 1 57 1
JOHN==
Roland -
(1543-1588)
I
[John]=
Robert
{? bap.
1556-60*)
Edmund=
d. 1571 i
Antony =
(1561-1610)
John
(I 584-1623)
John the administrator
(bap. 1583)
William
(1608-1682)
The claim of John, the administrator to the heirship
of the Roland branch, as against William, would then
be good : first, if he were descended from Robert, and
Robert were older than Antony ; or, secondly, if he
were descended from Antony, and his grandfather
were older than Edmund. This is a good illustration
of the difficulty that attended a question of title in
the days when the common evidence of birth was the
parish register, which in no case went further back
than 1538.
• The gap in the registers for this period would account for this
baptism not being recorded.
CHAPTER II
SECOND GENERATION : ANTHONY HARDY
THE parish register shows the following baptisms
of the children of Edmund Hardy :
Anthony, December i6, 1561.
A son (unnamed), April 17, 1563.
Alice, April 11, 1565.
Helen, November 30, 1570.
Of these we have no further record except of
Anthony. He married December 19, 1601, Elizabeth
Middleton, and was buried, like his father, after a
short connubial career, on July 28, 1610. He was no
doubt the " poor householder " who was given by
Agnes Hardy half a peck of bigg.
Elizabeth his wife was the daughter of William
Middleton of Lupton, a township in the extreme west
of the parish, and therefore somewhat remote from
Barbon. His marriage is recorded without the name
of his wife on November 12, 1563, and his daughter
Elizabeth was baptised October 28, 1572. From the
Middleton wills and inventories quoted above and
some others, it seems that there was more than one
branch of the Middleton family — or perhaps it would
be more correct to say simply more than one Middleton
family— then flourishing at Lupton, and they were
there at least a century later. William, above-named,
was buried September 12, 1580, leaving his wife Isabel
with two sons and four daughters, of whom the eldest
60
The Middletons of Luptmi 6i
was not more than fifteen, and the youngest were
twins aged about a year and a half.*
By his will dated April ii, 1580, " William Medle-
ton," as the scribe calls him, charges a sum of {3 6s. 8d.
on his tenement in favour of his younger son John.
Stephen is to have at twenty half the tenement, which
is to remain in his mother's hands till then, and she is
to have the other half during widowhood. Stephen is
to have the husbandry gear and two great arks, and
the rest of the goods are to be divided between the
other children. The wife Isabel is executrix, and Robert
Burrow and Anthon\' Burrow, probably her brothers, are
appointed supervisors along with Adam Middleton and
George Middleton. The total of the inventoiy, which
contains the ordinary articles of farming and household
stock, is £55 I OS. The widow Isabel survived her hus-
band upwards of thirty-two years, dj'ing in February,
1613. Her will is as follows : To my son Stephen Middle-
ton's children, los. ; to my son-in-law Matthew Faucitt's
children, los. ; to my daughter, Matthew Faucitt's wife,
20s. ; to my daughter Elizabeth Hardy and her children,
a stirke ; and to my son John Middleton, 20s. To her
two youngest daughters, the t\vins, Joan and Isabel, she
gives all the rest she has to dispose of. No doubt they
were her chief assistants in carrying on the half-share
of the farm which she had held since Stephen came of
age. As may be conjectured from the following
inventory of her effects dated February 23, 1613, the
dairying department was the scene of most of their
• The baptisms of Stephen and the eldest daughter probably
took place during the period 1 566-1 570, for which the register is a
blank. The others (including William, who was buried within ten
days of his baptism) are duly registered in the years 1571, 1572,
1575, and 1578.
62
Anthony Hardy
labours. The stock of cheese, valued in round figures at
10 marks, must according to current prices, say i|d. per
lb. (which is probably more than it was put at for probate
purposes), have amounted in quantity to 1200 lb.*
The valuers are Arthur Middleton, Arthur Burrow,
Edmund Middleton, and John Middleton. The last
was probably her younger son, and perhaps identical
with John of Aykrigg End, who died in 1619 as above
mentioned. Stephen, whom I have not succeeded in
tracing further, may have died without issue. There
is still a farm at a spot called, on the Ordnance map,
Aikrigg Green in Lupton. It must have been a bleak
moorland region before the modern roads and planta-
tions came into existence.
£
s.
d.
I horse
I
6
8
2 oxen
5
6
8
3 kine
7
5 young beasts
4
13
4
I swine
5
Pullen
2
Cheese
6
13
4
All the crops
3
16
Meal and malt
16
All her apparel
I
Sacks, pokes, and winding-clothes
[fo
r
cheese-making]
13
4
Hemp and ...
.
4
Brass and pewter
. ,
I
10
All the wood vessell .
6
8
A quarter of beef [salt.
of course] .
5
Girdle and heckle
3
2 old arks and a chest .
.
3
J
Total
•
•
£34_
4
_4
* Rogers, Hist. Agricttlt., Vol. VI, gives examples of the ntail
price in London in 1594 and 1601 as 2^d. and 2d. per lb.
J\fidiileio)is and Middlctons 63
As to debts it is briflly but significantly added,
" nothing owcn to hir or by hir."
The reader will notice that Elizabeth Hardy is
singled out for a legacy in kind instead of in money,
and that her stirk (presumably one of the two oxen
valued together at £5 6s. 8d.) would be worth more
than any of the sums given to the other children and
grandchildren. May we interpret this as showing
some thoughtful sympathy with the circumstances in
which the widow of poor Anthony Hardy found her-
self at this time ? As we shall see, he had left her with
four little children, the eldest only seven, and the two
youngest, including the son and heir, less than two
years old. She survived her husband nearly forty
years, being buried November 26, 1648, aged 76.
The name of Middleton is one of the most familiar,
and at the same time one of the most distinguished,
in the records of Kirkby Lonsdale. The Middletons
of Middleton Hall were lords of the manor of Middleton
for ten generations, from the time of Edward HI till
near the end of the seventeenth century. One is
therefore tempted to enquire what relationship existed
between the lords of the manor and the Middletons of
Lupton. Was the wife of poor Anthony Hardy a
descendant of some younger son of the Hall ? The
answer seems to be that it may well be so, but to
prove it so would be a hopeless task.
Younger sons whose descendants are entirely un-
accounted for appear numerously in the pedigree of
Middleton of Middleton Hall, and to some extent this
must account for the very frequent occurrence of the
name at the beginning of the parish registers. It
occurs, in fact, in the first twenty- five years twice as
64 Antho7iy Ha^'dy
often as Hardy. And, moreover, the calendars of the
Richmond Archdeaconry Court from 1550 to 1600
contain not only a corresponding number of entries
for Kirkby Lonsdale Middletons, but there are also
half as many again relating to the surrounding parishes
in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Now, assuming that
Middleton in Lonsdale was the source of all these
individuals, it b}^ no means follows that they were
derived from a common family stock ; for at the
period when surnames came into use (some centuries
before there was any Middleton of Middleton Hall)
many ordinary individuals quite unconnected with
each other by birth must have adopted the place-name
as the name of their family ; and, as the records above
referred to suggest, this would probably be most often
the case when such individuals migrated from Middle-
ton into one of the adjoining parishes or townships,
where they would naturally be called " of Middleton "
for want of already possessing any other patronymic.
This is, I think, enough to show the hopelessness of
obtaining any definite result from the existing materials.
But for the particular problem that concerns us there
is another difficulty — the absence of any serviceable
materials at all. Of the younger sons of the pedigree
family nothing is recorded beyond the names, and we
therefore cannot trace from them downwards. On the
other hand, to trace from the Middletons of Lupton
upwards seems equally impossible, as our first step
would take us beyond the limit both of recorded wills
and of parish registers. However, as it is not by any
means impossible that our Lupton ancestress was
after all a descendant of this lords of the manor of
Middleton, it may be permissible to give some account
Middle ton of Middldon Hall 65
of that armorial family — probably in its day the
most distinguished in the history of Kirkby
Lonsdale.*
As we have said, they held the lordship of Middleton
from the time of Edward III till near the end of the
seventeenth century, when the male line failed.
According to Nicolson and Burn the property was
then divided between two heiresses, and the elder sold
her portion, including the manor, the Hall, and the
rest of the demesnes, to one Benjamin Middleton,
who, notwithstanding his name, was not related to the
family who had so long possessed the estate. By a
mere chance, when verifying a reference to Ogilby's
Road Book of 1675, I pitched upon a copy in the
British Museumf which I have no doubt belonged to
this very person. Above the frontispiece on the left
is the signature " B. Middleton " in a hand fairly
corresponding with the latter part of the seventeenth
century, and on the right is the impression in red
wax of a shield bearing a saltire engrailed, which is
certainly the blazon of Middleton of Middleton Hall.
This unexpected meeting with Mr. Benjamin Middleton
is an odd coincidence, but the use of a seal of arms is
unfortunately far from conclusive evidence of one's
pedigree. Mr. Benjamin's notions on the subject may
have been somewhat similar to those of a " modern
major-general," who, having bought an estate which
included a chapel " with its contents," maintained
that the ancestors lying in the chapel were now his,
and that it was within his competence as their " de-
• Our account is based on the pedigrees in the heralds' visita-
tions of 161 5 and 1664, which also seem to be the material used by
NicoLson and Burn.
t Britannia, Volume the First, etc. The press-mark is 568. i. 10.
F
66 Antho7iy Hardy
scendant by purchase " to bring honour or disgrace
upon their escutcheon.
However this may be, Middleton Hall is now the
property of the family of Moore of Grimeshill, the
lineal descendants of the younger co-heiress of
the Middletons of that ilk, from whom they inherited
the other portion of the family estate. The Hall is
now a farm-house, and in its diminished state bears
testimony to the loyalty of its owners to the losing
side during the Great Rebellion. Major-General John
Middleton, a younger son of the house, was killed at
Hopton Heath, and his two brothers Richard and
Christopher also lost their lives fighting in the royal
cause. Their brother William, who was a colonel in
the king's army, was more fortunate, and we find him
in 1664 certifying the family history on the herald's
visitation of that year.
Kirkby Lonsdale, indeed, seems to have been some-
thing of a royalist hotbed. In a list of " delinquents "
in Westmorland annexed to a letter to the Committee
for Compounding Royalists' Estates, dated February
22, 1650, are the names of William Middleton of
Middleton (no doubt Colonel Middleton above men-
tioned), Henry Ward of Rigmaden, Henry Wilson of
Underley (the beautiful estate on the Lune between
Kirkby Lonsdale and Barbon), George Buchanan, the
unfortunate Vicar of Kirkby, and, amongst humbler
persons, we may add, as descended from families
connected by marriage with the Hardys some genera-
tions earlier, John Beck and Bridgett Bouskell.*
(Was it not an Agnes Bouskell who in those days
* Committee for Compounding, etc. (Record Office Calrs.), Vol. I,
p. 176.
The Civil War ; Middlcton Hall 67
boasted the possession of a jack, a salette, and a two-
handed sword, and a Thomas Bouskcll whose sword
and dagger were priced at ten shilUngs ?) In 1646
we find the then Wilson of Underley is marked down
for sequestration as having served as a captain of foot
under Sir PhiHp Musgrave of Eden Hall. Sir John
Otway of Ingmire, in Sedbergh, descended from a
branch of another of the old stocks in Middleton
township, was ejected from his fellowship at Cam-
bridge for refusing the Solemn League and Covenant,
and " did not show less courage in the field against the
sworn enemies of the kingdom than he had formerly
done in the university." He received his knighthood
in 1673 in recognition of his services both military and
diplomatic in the war and the Restoration.* Ingmire
Hall is still owned by his descendants.
Middleton Hall, according to Whitaker,f was
probably built by Sir Geoffrey Middleton, who was
knighted by Henry VIII, and was a major-general in
that king's expedition to Boulogne in 1543. As a
salaried olTicer in the service of the Border { he was
evidently a most important person in the neighbour-
hood of Lonsdale. He was buried at Kirkby Lonsdale
in 1545. Later and more accurate authorities § date
the Hall from about the middle of the fifteenth century.
The domestic part of it shows the close resemblance,
springing from the same early type, between the old
manorial hall of the pre-Tudor period and the states -
♦ See the Lije of [his friend] the Rev. John Barwick, by Peter
Barvvick.
I Richmondshire.
X Duckett, Cumb. and Westm. Ant. Sac. Trans., Vol. Ill, p. 206.
§ Old Manorial Halls oj Westmorland, etc., by Michael W. Taylor,
P- 237; J. F. Curwen, C. and W. Atit. Sac. Trans. (N.S.). XII.
68 Anthony Hardy
man's dwelling-house, as we have described it above,
in the sixteenth and following centuries. After entering
the outer courtyard you pass into the mell-doors or
screens, which lead out again into the inner yard.
On your right a door leads from the screens into the
hall, and others on the left into what was once the
buttery, kitchen, etc. As you advance into the hall,
with its windows of stone tracery, you have behind you
the fire-place, and against the opposite wall stands a
great carved oak aumbry. Behind this wall is a
charming withdrawing-room wainscoted with oak from
floor to ceiling. At this end also are the staircase
and doors leading to the modern kitchen and other
offices which have taken the place of the buildings
formerly looking on to the inner court.
The Middleton pedigrees in the heralds' visitations
of 1615 and 1664* show their connection with many
well-known north-country families, and their arms
(argent, a saltire engrailed sable) may be seen dis-
played with various alliances in the Middleton chapel,
or rather what remains of it at the north-east corner
of Kirkby Lonsdale church. In this chapel is a
truncated tomb with a pair of recumbent effigies,
which, according to Nicolson and Burn, represent the
John Middleton who died in 1580 and his wife Ann,
one of the Tunstalls of Thurland Castle. This attribu-
tion is confirmed by John Middleton's will,t in which
he directs that he shall be buried in " my chaunsel at
Kirkby-lonsdall."
For the sake of the reader who may be interested in
* Edited by Joseph Foster (i8go).
t Proved in the Richmond Archdeaconry Court, 1580.
The Musf^rave Pecfioyee 69
pushini::^ an enquiry about a possible ancestor, however
doubtful the result, into the domain of royal descents,
we may note here what appears to arise from a match
of one of the Middletons with a daughter of the Mus-
graves. According to the visitation pedigrees of 1615,
Thomas Middleton, the father of Sir Geoffrey, was the
son of Thomas by his wife Isabel, daughter of Sir
Richard Musgrave of Hartley Castle ; and Sir Richard
was the son of Sir Thomas by his wife Alice, daughter
of Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cambridge, who was
a paternal grandson of Edward III and paternal
grandfather of Edward IV. He is known in history
(and Shakespeare) as one of the three leaders beheaded
for conspiracy against the house of Lancaster at the
beginning of the reign of Henry V. It was, in fact,
his son, the Duke of York, in whose name the Wars of
the Roses were begun. There is, however, some doubt
as to the fact of this marriage of his daughter Alice —
indeed, as to the very existence of the bride — as in the
pedigree of 1664 no Ahce Plantagenet is mentioned.
This cannot be overlooked, although the later pedigree
is, on the face of it, far from perfect. The mother of
Alice is said in the earlier pedigree to have been Maud,
daughter of Thomas, Lord Clifford, who was un-
doubtedly Richard Plantagenet's second wife ; but
the assertion that there was any surviving issue of this
marriage is contradicted by the finding at the in-
quisition on the death of IMaud* that she had left no
issue, and that consequently her heir was her brother
Thomas. Nevertheless, though Ahce Plantagenet does
not appear in the Musgrave genealogy as generally
* hiq. p.m. of Matilda, Countess of Cambridge (then widow of
Lord Latymer), 25 Hen. VI, No. 21.
yo Anthony Hardy
set out,* it seems that, however the various differences
between the visitation pedigrees are explained or
reconciled, there must be either a gap or one " Eliza-
beth " (of undisclosed origin) about the place where
Alice would come in ; so that after all we may con-
jecture that her existence was a fact, and that the
reason for its being overlooked by the jury at the
inquisition was a question, not always so easy to
answer, as to whether she was born in or out of
wedlock.
It would be no very extravagant supposition that
her father should so far resemble a few others of his
line as to consider one wife at a time a somewhat short
allowance.
* The Musgraves would probably scarcely regard the supposed
Alice as adding anything to the ancient dignity of their own descent.
CHAPTER III
THIRD GENERATION : WILLIAM HARDY, SENIOR
THE parish register records the baptisms of the
following children of Anthony Hardy :
Margaret, May 5, 1603.
Elizabeth, March 20, 1605-6.
William and Isabel, December 18, 160S.
Isabel we fmd was buried on March 20, 1619-20, but
we have no entry to show what became of either of
the other daughters. This is no doubt owing to the
disturbed state of things during the Civil War. The
vicar, George Buchanan, was sorely persecuted by
two of his Cromwellian parishioners, and actually in
gaol several times ; the last for a period of three years.
From March, 1642, to April, 1643, all entries are
wanting. From about April, 1645, when one William
Cole seems to have been intruded into the Vicarage,
until the Restoration, the registers were very carelessly
kept.* Thus, whatever may have been the case with
the two sisters, who may or may not have married,
it can scarcely be doubted that their brother William
was married near the beginning of the gap between
March, 1642, and April, 1643, his eldest child, as
recorded, being baptised in May, 1643. Of his wife
we only know that her christian name was Christabel,
* Edward Conder, Kirkby Lonsdale Parish Registers ; B. Night-
ingale, The Ejected of 1662 in Cumberland, etc., p. 1014.
71
72 William Hardy, Senior
and that she was buried on February 20, 1678-9.
William himself, described as " William Hardy,
senior,* of Barbon," followed her three and a half
years later, being buried August 25, 1682.*
It will be noticed that this William did not receive
at his christenings the name of his paternal grand-
father Edmund, but that of his grandfather on the
side of his mother. In this we may perhaps perceive
a becoming submission on the part of the " poor
householder " to superior family pretensions on the
part of his wife. In the next generation also the
paternal names are neglected, but it will be seen that
on the family fortunes somewhat reviving the old
custom again comes into favour.
The following curious inventory of Gaffer William's
personal effects, written in a far from clerkly hand, is
preserved amongst the Richmond records. The spell-
ing, which I have reproduced liteyatim, is interesting,
as echoing something of the accent of the dales :
April the sih, 1683.
A true invatery of the goodes of Wilyam Hardy
lat deceased.
£ s.
d.
Onehatt
I
4
Collr, dublet and bretches .
6
4
A dublet and bretches
I
On[e] pare of shus and hosse
I
2 shirts .....
2
A bed of cloese [set of bed clothes]
6
6
One chest ....
2
In all .
. £1
2
* He was doubtless called William Hardy, senior, to distinguish
him from another William Hard}' of Barbon, whose death appears
in the Richmond Archdeaconry records in March, lOgg.
A Retired StaUsnian 73
Thcas goods prised by
Mr. Robert Ustinson,*
Thomas Selme § his mark,
WiLYAM W Bkockbank, his mark,
WiLYAM X PaKSIVELL.
Notwithstanding the very small value of this
veritably personal estate and the fact that the de-
ceased's only surviving child, Edward, was necessarily
entitled to the whole of it, a regular bond was entered
into by the latter for payment of debts and due
administration. Both Edward Hardy and his surety,
Thomas Read, who joined in the bond, are described
as of Kirkby Lonsdale. This probably means the
parish, not the town ; as it will be seen from what
follows that they were probably both of Barbon.
Read was probably Edward Hardy's brother-in-
law.
The exceedingly limited nature of old William's
personal estate might at first be taken as an indication
of extreme misery, but, on the contrary, the true view,
as I would venture to suggest, is that at something under
threescore years and ten he had reached the sunmiit
of a dalesman's felicity. For though he had evidently
retired from business and handed over his stock and
household effects to his son and heir, he would still be
master of the family estate — if there was one, and
from this all his mortal wants would be amply
supphed.
" How blest is he who crowns in shades like these
A youth of labour with an age of ease."
• Presumably also the scribe.
74 William Hardy, Senior
With the loss of his wife this feUcity must have
been dashed, but within a few months she was in a
sense replaced by a daughter-in-law, and he lived long
enough to see the birth of his eldest grandson, to
whom his name was given.
CHAPTER IV
THE HEARTH-TAX RETURN FOR 167O
BEFORE passing from William Hardy the elder
to the next generation we may notice the
glimpse afforded by the return for the Hearth Tax in
Westmorland, preserved in the Public Record Office
for the year 1670.* According to this document the
number of hearths in the whole parish of Kirkby
Lonsdale was 571, exclusive of those exempt as be-
longing to dweUings under the value of 20s. a year, or
occupied by persons not possessed of £10 worth of
goods or excused from poor-rate. The number of
houses was 381, most of which had only one hearth.
In the hst for Kirkby Lonsdale itself there were 102
houses, with 170 hearths taxed and 19 exempt.
Amongst the former we may notice in passing the
school-house with two hearths, and the vicar, ^Ir.
Hoyle's, also with two.
In Lupton there were 37 houses with 43 hearths,
mcluding William Middlcton's and John Middleton's
with one hearth each, and two hearths exempt.
In Middleton there were 62 houses, all taxed, with
loi hearths, including Widow Moore's with five hearths,
John Middleton, Esquire's (Middleton Hall), with seven,
* Exchequer Records : Lay Subsidies for Westmorland (see
Appendix II below.) The return is authenticated at Kendal quarter
sessions by the Clerk of the Peace, under date January 10, 22nd
Charles II (1671).
75
76 The Hearth-Tax Return for 1670
Thomas Otway's with two, and Nicholas Otway's
with two and one.
In Barbon there were 36 houses with 55 hearths, all
taxed, including Samuel Gibson's with one hearth and
Richard Shuttleworth, Esquire's, with two.
In Casterton there were 33 houses with 44 hearths,
all taxed, including William Hardy's with one.
Besides the last-named, who must, I think, be
identified with our Gaffer William, there are four other
Hardys in the list. In Kirkby Lonsdale there are
WiUiam Hardy with three hearths and Robert with two,
and in Barbon there are Robert with two and Edmund
with one. The first is doubtless identical with " William
Hardy of Kirkby Lonsdale " who was buried there
March 21, 1696-7, and the last with " Edmund Hardy
of the Town-end in Barbon" who was buried in
September, 1680, and whose will was proved October
15 following. Traces of the two Roberts are not
wanting in the register of baptisms, but they appear
there no further.
The number of our cousins in their ancient habitat
is thus seen to be much diminished, but it should be
added that the Hearth Tax return probably somewhat
exaggerates their paucity, for it is well known that
the tax was greatly resented and the inquisitions of the
official chimney-hunter were not too diligently pressed.
He seems to have forgotten to enter one Richard
Hardy, who appears from the parish registers to have
represented the Casterton branch down to his death
in September, 1679. There was also a widow Ellen
Hardy " of Mansergh Hall houses " buried on June
4, 1677, but the township of Mansergh is entirely
omitted from the list, and consequently the Condcrs
The Identity of Gaffer William yy
and other statesmen who appear there on the manor
court-rolls in 1664* must have been let off. It seems
difficult to believe that in such circumstances as then
existed in country places a tax of two shillings a year
per chimney can have been worth collecting. It was
promptly abolished in the first year of William and
Mary (1688) after being twenty years on the Statute
Book.
The identity of our ancestor William with the
William Hardy entered in Castcrton is not open, I
think, to much doubt, though the tax-collector seems
to have indulgently rolled him into one with his
cousin Richard. It is possible, though somewhat
unlikely, that in 1670 he actually lived in Casterton
township, and only came to Barbon later ; for, even
assuming that he ultimately died at Beckfoot (as his
son Edward certainly did) we have no evidence as to
when or how he acquired his home there — whether on
the death of his cousin's widow Margaret in 1635 or
later ; whether by inheritance or purchase, or whether
it was really his own or his son's. But it seems more
probable that the compiler of the return, being a
Crown officer and not a local constable, f did not
trouble to follow the boundaries of the townships or
manors, and, finding Beckfoot connected by a practic-
able highway with Casterton, and not with Barbon
village, assigned it to the former " constable-wick "
accordingly. We have already seen that there was an
ancient highway from Casterton to the ford at High
Beckfoot passing through Low Beckfoot, whereas
from Barbon even to-day High Beckfoot is only
♦ According to a list supplied to me by Mr. Edward Conder, f.s.a.
t Under the Amending Act of 1664 (16 Car. II, cap. 3).
78 The Hearth-Tax Return f 07' 1670
reached directly by mere footpaths, and the present
lane to Low Beckfoot can scarcely be older than the
eighteenth-century coach-road from which it diverges.
It may be noted here that in our Gaffer William we
have the only link where it is possible to suggest a
doubt in our chain of descent, as we have no con-
firmatory evidence of his identity with the son of
Antony christened in 1608. All we can say is that the
parish register contains no other baptism with which
he corresponds, while on the other hand the deaths of
the two other Williams, one of Barbon and the other
of Kirkby, recorded in 1699 and 1697 respectively,
make it extremely unlikely that either of them was
born so far back as 1608. They may be easily ac-
counted for by baptisms entered in 1619 and 1646,
to say nothing of possible omissions during the Crom-
wellian period when the registers were imperfectly
kept.
CHAPTER V
FOURTH GENERATION : THOMAS AND EDWARD
HARDY
T
HE parish register shows baptisms of the following
children of William Hardy :
Thomas, May ii, 1643.
Edward, January 9, 1644-5.
Here, as in the previous generation, the paternal hne
is ignored in the choice of christian names.
Thomas died in his father's lifetime, leaving a will
dated November 11, 1676, and signed by the testator's
mark. By this document, after commending the place
of his burial to his executors' discretion, he disposes
of the " httle worldly estate God hath given me " as
follows : To his brother Edward, £10 ; to George
RoUinson, son of George Rollinson, 2s. 6d. ; to Isabel,
daughter of George Woodhouse, 2s. 6d. ; to his
father William and his mother " Restabell," all the
rest. He appoints his father and mother executors.
The half-crown legatees were no doubt god-children.
The parish register shows Isabel Woodhouse to have
been at this time in her fifth year. We are therefore
debarred from romancing on the supposition of a more
tender relationship, our uncle Thomas, the testator,
being thirty-three.
The inventory of his effects indicates that he was
79
8o
Thomas and Edward Hardy
not a farmer, but apparently a clothier, carrying goods
from his father's farm to the market, or possibly to
his shop at Kirkby. Perhaps he was also a horse-
dealer.
Inventory of goods and chattels of Thomas Hardy,
late of Barbon, appraised November 20, 1676,
by Thomas Fawcett, Edmond Garnett, Samuel
Ottway, and James Wadeson.
In purse, apparel, bridle and sadle
in Wollen cloth ....
in Hempe or lininge [linen] cloth at
Kirkby .
in Cloth at Barbon
in Yarne .
in Stockins
in Horses .
One chiste
Oweing for horses to him
in Bonds .
Found uncrost [not crossed out in his
books, uncancelled] ... 79
£
s.
d.
4
13
4
I
3
6
I
15
14
2
12
6
5
4
3
I
7
15
33
13
7
In all [apparently wrongly cast] £61 2 5
The bond for administration of Thomas's effects
given by his father William and joined in by his
brother Edward as a surety, is signed by both of them
as marksmen, but we notice that Edward, on his
father's death six years later, signs his name in a
clumsy but very legible hand with the surname under
the christian name, which has a superfluous " y "
added to it evidently by inadvertence. He seems
Edwards Marriiwe and Death 8 1
v>
then to have been making the most of his slender
attainments as a scribe.
From the will of Thomas it may be inferred that
whatever may have been the capacity — or want of
capacity — of his father, his mother, being equally
joined as executor and residuary legatee, was not a
person to be ignored. We may therefore credit
lildward with some prudence and patience in delaying
his wedding till the ancient dame had made her last
journey from Barbon to the parish church. Thence
but three months later, on May 24, 1679, being in his
thirty-sixth year, he brought home his bride, Isabel
Reade, to take the woman's place in his father's house.
In the register both bride and bridegroom are described
as of Barbon. The Reades appear in the registers
rarely and rather late, and there is no baptismal entry
corresponding with Isabel Hardy. This may be due
to the carelessness of William Cole, who, as already
stated, was intruded into the Vicarage from about
1645 to 1660. There is, however, on March 27, 1657,
the burial of Agnes Reade, wife of Christopher Reade
of Barbon, and it is not unlikely that these were
Isabel's parents.
Edward Hardy was buried at Kirkby Lonsdale on
October 8, 1710, and on the 14th administration
of his personal estate was granted to his son William
for the use of his widow Isabella. In the administra-
tion bond Edward is described as of Beckfoot, husband-
man, and William as of Barbon. From what follows
I am inclined to think that William, still a bachelor,
though nearly thirty, had not yet left his father's
home.
The following is the inventory of the latter's per-
£
s.
d.
2
10
o
2
I
10
82 Thomas and Edivard Hardy
sonalty, dated the 12th and exhibited October 14,
1710 :
Purse and apparel ....
Bedstocks, bedding (linen and wollen)
Wooden vassill, brass and pewther
Chists, arks, chaires, formes, tables,
stooles and cushions . . .100
Scutles, ridles, sacks, pokes, and winnow-
ing cloth ....
Earthen vassills and iron utensils
Meal, Malte, and other provision ,
Ploughs, harrows, ploughgeare, boards,
and shilves . . . . . no
Bridle, sadle, carts, cartgeere, and
wheels .
Husbandry geere
Poultry and dung-hill
Four kine
Six young bease
Corne and hay .
Debts owing to the deced
15
9
6
Total*
15
10
5
15
10
20
35
£105 5 6
William Hardy writes his name to the administration
bond in a fairly penmanlike hand.
* To make this total there is an error in casting or an omission
of items to the amount of £ii,.
CHAPTER VI
FIFTH GENERATION : CHILDREN OF EDWARD
HARDY
'' I ^HESE, it seems, were as follows :
-*- William, who was probably the eldest, as on
his father's death administration of the estate was
granted to him with the " tuition " (or guardianship)
of his sister Agnes.
Thomas, baptised September 23, 1683.
John, baptised November 18, 1688.
Edward, buried November 7, 1692 ; and
Agnes, who, as already mentioned, was a minor, on
October 14, 1710.
Neither William's, Edward's, nor Agnes's baptism
is registered at Kirkby Lonsdale — why, we are unable
to say, but the brotherhood of the three surviving
brethren is amply made out by the evidences which
follow.
This generation makes an epoch in the history of
our family. WiUiam, the eldest son, who seems to
have been the first of his race to be fairly able to wTite,
continued in the traditional calhng of his ancestors ;
but on his father's death he married and migrated
from the old home, and though his residence was no
83
84 Children of Edward Hardy
further off than the adjoining parish it involved a
change in the mode of HveUhood as well as a change
of scene. His younger brothers made a much more
decided move. They both became clergymen, and
settled down in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Their mother, and presumably their sister Agnes,
were left in possession of the ancestral tenement at
Beckfoot, and we shall find reason to suppose that at
least the mother remained there till her death. She
was buried at Kirkby Lonsdale, November 28, 1724.
§1. William Hardy of Park House
On January 27, 1710-11, WilHam Hardy, being
still described as of Barbon, was married at the
church of Tunstal, just over the Lancashire border,
to Elizabeth Flasby, who was presumably of that
parish and of a family originating still further east,
but not found in the registers of Kirkby Lonsdale.
There is, in fact, a hamlet called Flasby in the parish
of Gargrave in the West Riding, and it occurs as a
family name in the will of John Middleton of West-
house in Thornton, a Yorkshire parish adjoining
Kirkby Lonsdale, dated January 16, 1613-4.*
After his marriage William Hardy lived until 171 9,
and perhaps later, at Park House in the parish of
Tunstal. It is now a farm-house to which are attached
about a thousand acres of land. It stands on the right
bank of the Leek beck, a tributary of the Lune, and
looks up the valley towards the fells above Barbon.
To reach it there is a drive through the grounds for
* Richmoad Archdeaconry Court.
The Wilsons of Dallavi To7vcr S5
about half a iiiilo from the entrance gate at Cowan
Bridge, by which the Lcck is crossed. These grounds
are, in fact, the park belonging to, but quite detached
from, the ancient castle of Thurland, once the strong-
hold of the Tunstals. " The park " is actually men-
tioned in the will of Brian Tunstal, the " Stainless
Knight " of Scott's Marmion, made on the eve of his
setting forth to die on the field of Flodden.* Early in
the seventeenth century it was acquired by Edward
Wilson of Low Levens, from whom it descended to
his kinsman Edward Wilson of Dallam Tower, known
as " Little Edward," who died at the age of eighty-nine
in 1707. This Little Edward had a son known as
" Long Edward " or Edward of Park House. At Park
House he was born, and there he lived until the death
of his father, t There is a stone let into the wall over
the front door inscribed
indicates the period of his
some repairs or improve-
E.W.
1676
This no doubt
carrying out
ments with a
view to his going into possession on his marriage, which
took place the following year with Catherine, daughter
of Sir Daniel Fleming of Rydal. The death of his father
in 1707 of course led to his removing to Dallam Tower,
and Park House, thus vacated, became available for
* Whitaker sets out the will in the History of Richmondshire.
The Park is shown by an enclosure on the maps of Lancashire,
Yorkshire, and Westmorland in Saxton's Atlas of England and
Wales, pubhshed 1579 (see Frontispiece).
t The history of the Wilson family (and incidentally of Park
House) is given in the Rev. Wm. Hutton's Beetham Repository, a
MS. edited for the Tract Series of the Cumberland and Westmor-
land Antiquarian Society, by J. R. Ford (1906). Sec also the
Cumberland and Westmorland Visitation of 1GO4 (cd. Jos. Foster)
and Westmorland Church Notes, by E. Bellasis (1888-9). Low
Levens is in Hcvcrsham, and Dallam Tower in the adjoining parish
of Beetham.
86 William Hardy of Park House
letting to William Hardy. That the period of the latter's
residence continued from his marriage at least down
to March, 171 9, appears from the register of his
children's baptisms at Tunstal. In 1719 the death
took place of " Long " Edward Wilson, whose son
and heir, Daniel, rebuilt Dallam Tower between
1720 and 1723. During the rebuilding Daniel
Wilson no doubt required Park House for his own
occupation.
Enough of the house is left to give a very good idea
of what it originally was, and probably remained, till
William Hardy's day. The plan is of the late Tudor
or early Jacobean type of small manor-house, which
differed from that of the medieval hall and the
ordinary farm-house of later times, which we have
already described, mainly in the absence of the screens
or mell-doors, so that the entrance led directly into
the hall. Park House was probably built at the time
of the property being acquired by the Wilsons at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, the epoch of
the union of the two Crowns which was to make a
fortified house on the Border a thing of the past. Mr,
Conder's house at Terry Bank, built, as already
mentioned, at the same period, is of the same type,
and it occurs in a somewhat more elegant shape in
Newby Hall in Morland parish, which Dr. Taylor
also ascribes to the early part of the seventeenth
century.* The subjoined plan of the ground floor of
Park House will simplify our description, but being
drawn from my own somewhat imperfect measure-
* Old Manorial Halls of Cimiberland and Westmorland, p. 103 ;
and ee Newby Hall, by R. M. Rigg, in C. and W. Ant. Soc.
Trans, XII (N.S.), p. 121.
Plan of Park House 87
ments, it must not be taken as more than a sketch of
approximate accuracy.
A. Probable position of porch. The walUng shown
by shading seems to have been added to form the
present doorway and a recess for cloaks.
B B B. Passage formed out of the hall and witli-
drawing-room by modern partitions.
C. Remaining part of hall now used as a parlour.
The original south windows have been partly blocked,
as shown by shading, and three lights have been
opened between them. The north window was origin-
ally further west.
abed. Hearth-space in hall and kitchen, originally
open, but now enclosed and fitted with modern grates.
The chimney over this space is carried up through
the floor above.
E. Remaining part of withdrawing-room or dining-
room, now used as a store-room.
F. Staircase, now partitioned off from adjoining
part and from west wing. The ground floor and
north upper room of this are let off in separate
occupation.
G. Present entrance to west wing and part adjoining
staircase.
H. Modern stairs to upper north room.
K K. Tower.
L. Garden,
M. Modern kitchen,
N. Parlour, originally kitchen. The arch of the
fire-place remains open, but the rest is enclosed and
fitted with a modern grate.
O. Passage formed by partition out of kitchen, with
modern stairs partitioned off from the hall. The
88 William Hardy of Park House
entrance to the modern kitchen probably takes the
place of an original window.
P. Cupboard.
Q. Part of dairy, which was perhaps part of the
original kitchen. It has been enlarged by removing
the wall shown by broken lines and partitioning off
part of the east wing. There was probably also a
window on the south side of this room.
The east wing has been altered so as to communicate
with the modern outbuildings with which it is sur-
rounded on all sides except facing the front garden.
It is now entered only through these outbuildings
from the farm-yard. This part of the building is only
sketched in outhne on the plan, but it can be seen
from the upper part of the main walls that the two
wings were originally symmetrical.
The house is a long, low, stone building in two stories
with a moderately pitched roof of ordinary slates.
It was probably originally covered with stone slates,
and the chimney-stack over the huge double hearth
was doubtless much larger than the present one.
With the important exceptions of the general plan
and the windows it is now devoid of all characteristic
architectural features. It would be no extravagant
conjecture to suppose that there were originally at
least stone copings on the gables, terminated by
kneelers and simple ball-shaped finials. The porch,
which may or may not have been of two stories, was
probably finished in the same style. The windows in
the north front of the upper story would, of course, be
placed symmetrically over the lower ones. This is
no longer the case, except on the east side of the main
block and in the west wing. The north front, now
Park House as it is 89
much disfigured by alterations and additions, was
about 100 feet long, the central block being about 66,
and the wings about 17 feet each. The windows
have stone mullions and dripstones, some being
divided into three and some into four lights, square-
headed and without transoms. The chamfering of
the mullions of several of the upper windows is hollow
in the early style ; in the others it is plain. The latter
have probably been substituted much later. The
alterations in these windows, partly in the number of
lights and partly in position, especially on the upper
floor, have greatly disfigured the front. The wings end
in gables to the north, and have no windows on that
side. Between them is a garden enclosed by a low
wall. It is surmounted by modern iron paling, but is
no doubt on the site of an old one.
The gable of the west wing is surmounted by a
chimney-stack and covered with ivy, and forms with
the gabled end of the main building, also ivy-clad, a
comparatively picturesque feature. The upper floor
has a mullioned window under the main gable matching
that below.
The " tower," to use the name the occupiers gave
it not thirty years ago, now consists of two stories,
the upper one being covered by an open gable roof.
The ground floor, or rather basement, of which the
walls are three feet thick, is lighted only by small
arched openings about a foot high. The upper floor
has a small window close under the eave to the west,
and a large mullioned window under the gable to the
south. The level of this floor is several feet lower than
that of the main building.
Without wishing to dogmatise on a subject of which
90 William Hardy of Park Ho2ise
I know so little, I venture to express an opinion, based
on many similar cases described by Dr. Taylor, that
this building is the remains of a small specimen of the
strongholds called peles, which were evenly distributed
over Cumberland and Westmorland in the times when
the Border country was the scene of constant warfare.
The oldest now existing are of the fourteenth century,
and they formed the nucleus of numerous manor-houses
built down to the late Tudor times. The typical pele
tower consisted of a vaulted basement, a solar or
lord's apartment on the first floor, and a sleeping-
chamber under the roof, which was surrounded with
a crenellated parapet.* In the case of Park House this
tower may have been doubly useful when the sur-
rounding land was in fact a park, that is a hunting-
ground, but in the planning of the dwelling-house it
appears rather to be treated as an excrescence than
a nucleus. As will be seen from the plan, however,
it was connected with the house by the small inter-
mediate building which contains the staircase. At
the top of the first flight was apparently a doorway,
now blocked up, leading into the first floor of the tower ;
the second flight continues to the upper floor of the
dwelling-house.
The L shape thus produced doubtless also facilitated
the formation of an enclosed garden or courtyard on
the south side of the main building. There may pos-
sibly have been in the original plan a projection at the
east end to match the tower.
The interior of the house is greatly disguised. The
* Old Manorial Halls, p. 41 . A well-known Lancashire example on
a large scale is Berwick Hall ; see Frontispiece, and Garner and
Stratton, Tudor Domestic Architecture in England, Vol. II, p. 151.
Interior of Park House 91
hall has been much reduced in size by the partitions
which make a passage on two sides, by the walling up
of the hearth, and perhaps also by the cutting off of the
space, now occupied by the stairs, reached from a
passage which has been partitioned out of the kitchen.
Five lights have been blocked out of the original
v^indows in the south wall of the hall, and three
fresh ones have been opened in the space between
them.
The wall dividing the kitchen into two with a
corresponding encroachment on the other side into
the wing may be of old standing, though not original.
The other subdivisions of the wings seem less doubtful.
It seems at least possible that the original doorways
into the kitchen and drawing-room were on the south
side, and that the present entrances are modern. The
original line of division between the hall and kitchen
seems doubtful, and the question of the original back
entrances, if any, is also left by the numerous modern
alterations somewhat diiiftcult of solution.
The old staircase has some nicely carved spiral oak
balusters, and on the first floor, forming the division
between the staircase and the adjoining bedroom, is
some old oak panelling. These are the only traces
of internal decoration which it is possible to attribute
to the period of the house or even to the eighteenth
century.
Finally we must not forget the Park House pew
which, teste the vicar, once occupied a position at the
head of the nave of Tunstal Church, second only in
dignity to the chapel in the chancel aisle belonging
to Thurland Castle. It may still be seen in an old
engraving of the interior of the church preserved in
92 William Hardy of Park House
the vestry. It is a journey of some two miles and a
half to the parish church from Cowan Bridge, shortened
though it may be by a footpath across the fields
which Charlotte Bronte and her sisters found such a
sore trial on days of rain and mud. Though the Park
House pew is no more, the room over the church porch
in which these poor schoolgirls ate their Sunday
luncheon still exists. It is not surprising that the pew
should have gone out of use, since the modern church
of Leek is but a stone's-throw from the Park House
boundary.
One is inchned to dwell upon Park House and its
history because it is the oldest visible object which we
can associate distinctly with any of our ancestors of
the north-country period. In the churchyard at
Kirkby Lonsdale not a tombstone remains bearing their
name. Beyond the pack-horse bridge already men-
tioned there are no buildings at Beckfoot which one
can regard as older than about the middle of the
eighteenth century. The dwelling there, which prob-
ably dated at least from Elizabethan times, and had
never pretended to be more than the abode of a
statesman, must have been far less commodious than
Park House, which may well have given the new tenant
a sense on his marriage of having made a move, if not
in the social scale, at least in the scale of civilisation.
He was no longer a statesman cultivating a few
" paternal acres," but he was a tenant-farmer of an
estate of which the acreage seems to have run into
many hundreds. Yet it is probable that life at Park
House was primitive enough, and not much in advance
of what is said to have been common in the dales even
at the end of the eighteenth century. For WiUiam
From Statesman to Tenant -Farmer 93
Hardy was of thorough Westmorland breed, though
a mile or so outside his native borders. In no other
county has progress — or rather, should we say, change ?
— been so slow and, perhaps we should add, so solid.*
The stanzas of Pope, in which the above oft-quoted
phrase occurs, are worth repeating here, so accurately
do they seem to be modelled on the mode of life from
which at this epoch our ancestry began to depart :
" Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
On his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire.
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire."
What became of William Hardy immediately after
leaving Park House is not perfectly clear. The bap-
tism of his son Joseph, born in 1722 or 1723, which
would in the ordinary course have thrown some hght
on the point, was postponed till ten years later. In
all probability he returned to his old home. The next
record we have of him is the baptism at Kirkby
Lonsdale of apparently his youngest son : " George,
son of William Hardy of Barbon, yeoman." This
took place on March 16, 1724-5, and, being less than
six months after the death of Wilham's mother,
suggests that it was on that event that he returned
* Manners and Customs of Westmorland by a Literary Antiquarian
[John Gough], reprinted in 1847 from the Kendal Chronicle of 1812 ;
Report of Andrew Pringle, 1797 (in Bailey and Culley, Agriculture
in Northumberland, etc.).
94 William Hardy of Park House
to Barbon, or that her age and infirmities had made
it necessary that he should reheve her of all responsi-
biHty in the carrying on of the farm on the family
estate. The absence of a record of her personal property
in the Archdeaconry Court is in favour of the latter
supposition.
The description of " yeoman " is significative of the
change of status which had ensued in Barbon on the
enfranchisement of the holdings of the customary
tenants by the deed of January 17, 1718, which has
already been referred to.* This deed is of interest
as setting out the names of all the customary tenants
at that date with quit rents indicating the relative
values of their holdings. Our ancestor William is the
only Hardy in the list, and judging from a glance
through the parish and archdeaconry records it seems
that he had outstayed all his cousins in Kirkby Lons-
dale. The last traces of them which I have noticed
indicate an emigration of some of them about the year
1700 into Whittington and Wraton, both just over
the Lancashire border.
The effect of the enfranchisement on the remaining
" Border-tenants " was to turn them into ordinary
freeholders, and to put an end to all the rights of the
lord of the manor in their property, except certain
small fixed rents-charge, varying from 2d. to
£1 I2S. lod. The scheme of the enfranchisement was
the payment of £1700 down and of these perpetual
rents-charge or quit rents amounting annually in all to
£15 4s. 2d., both sums being apportioned amongst
the various " tenements " according to their actual
value. The freehold was conveyed to six out of the
* p. 13 ; and see Appendix III.
The Barbon Enfranchise77ient 95
thirty-eight tenants scheduled to the deed, and the
£1700 was expressed to be paid by these six trustees
to Mr. Shuttleworth. No doubt most of the tenants
contributed their share of the money then and there,
but it was provided that in case any had not done
so the trustees, as advancing the money for them,
should stand entitled to legal interest until due
payment.
William Hardy appears in the deed as one of the
trustees, and this may be taken as an indication of his
being looked up to amongst his neighbours. It may
also be noted that he appears in a second schedule,
which contains a list of eight tenants of the manor
who already held other land as freehold subject to
various small " free rents " or quit rents, which it
was provided should still be paid as before. The other
trustees are Thomas Garnett, Robert Place, Robert
Holme, Thomas Richardson, and James Harrison,
the last-named being the present vicar of Barbon's
ancestor. He, as well as Holme and Richardson, also
appears in the schedule of freeholders, the others
being Joseph Gibson (doubtless of Whelprigg), Thomas
Dent, Anthony Reamy, and Elizabeth Glover. Joseph
Gibson is the only one in the freeholders' list who does
not also appear as a customary tenant.
The average amount of quit rent charged on the
various tenements is 8s., and the average capital
payment approximately £^^. William Hardy's quit
rent being 6s. 7d. shows his share of the redemption
money to have been £36 4s.
The next record we have of him is the baptism of
his son Joseph at Kirkby Lonsdale on February 11,
1732-3, in which he is still described as "of Barbon,
96 William Hardy of Park House
yeoman." Soon after this, though we do not know his
place of abode for the next thirty years or thereabouts,
there is reason to suppose that he finally parted with
his ancestral home and again moved eastward. Let
into the wall of a barn at the upper and, as I should
judge, the older of the two farms at High Beckfoot is
a stone tablet bearing this inscription :
H
T E
1735
This, according to the usage common in this part of
the country, is to be interpreted somewhat in the
manner of a shield, in which the husband's coat of
arms impales the wife's. H stands for the surname,
T for the christian name of the husband, E for that of
the wife. I have little doubt that the mark is that of
Thomas Holme and Elizabeth his wife (born Huck),
who were married at Kirkby Lonsdale on September
2, 1732. On the plans of Mr. Harrison's property
sold in 1828, already quoted, the names of Holme and
Huck both appear as adjoining owners. At High
Beckfoot Mrs. Alice Holme and William Huck appear
to own the land within a few hundred yards of the
aforesaid barn and farm-house, and " Mr. T. Holme's
devisees " are a little nearer the village. At Low
Beckfoot William Huck appears again, and the
property of J. Holme extends from the Lune up to and
beyond the lane which joins the two hamlets. It
seems, therefore, a very likely theory that a sale by
William Hardy of his Beckfoot property took place
in, or shortly after, the year 1733 to the newly married
Thomas Holme, and that the latter, after setthng
He Sends a So?i to College 97
down there, added the barn and perhaps made other
improvements in 1735. From the enfranchisement
deed of 1718 it appears that next to the Garnetts,
who together held nearly a fourth in value of all the
customary property in Barbon, the four Holmes,
including Thomas, were the largest owners in one
family ; and it seems rather in accordance with the
ordinary course of such things at that period that they
should add to their possessions, and that the smaller
owners should tend to disappear.
The year 1733 also corresponds with an important
event in the yeoman's family, which may have had
something to do with his decision to realise his land
and perhaps improve or economise his resources.
This was the sending of his eldest son to Cambridge,
where he was admitted at Christ's College on June 16.
It was also perhaps the formalities attending this
event that led to his son Joseph's christening, though
at the age of ten. Owing to some unexplained cause
it had apparently not taken place at the usual time,
and the omission had probably been forgotten till the
present occasion arose for looking into the parish
register in proof of birth. The second and third
sons, now aged seventeen and sixteen, would be old
enough at this time to be apprenticed to the hardware
business in which we find they were trading some eight
or ten years later, so that their father may well have
been just now in a convenient position for putting his
establishment on a fresh footing.
However this may be, there is practically no doubt
that at the tirrie he made his will he was no longer a
landed proprietor. In this document, which bears date
December 8, 1762, he describes himself as " of Ingleton
H
98 William Hardy of Park House
in the County of York, husbandman." Whereas the
entrance to Park House at Cowan Bridge is about two
miles from Kirkby Lonsdale, Ingleton is another five
on the same road, which runs from Kirkby to Settle
and so on to Leeds. Close to Ingleton it passes through
the parish of Thornton in Lonsdale, where, as already
mentioned, may be traced some early record of the
family of William Hardy's wife, the Flasbys.
Ingleton is a great contrast to Kirkby Lonsdale,
which may boast, according to Ruskin,* of a churchyard
affording " one of the loveliest scenes in England — and
therefore in the world. Whatever moorland hill and
sweet river and English foliage can be at their best
is gathered here." The ancient church, the visible
outcome of twenty or thirty generations of human
piety, stands within a stone's-throw of the old market
cross, the bygone and now almost lifeless centre of the
little town, close to the steep bank where of all human
sounds you hear only the falling of the mill-stream, as
it once was, driven into its channel by a dam now
abandoned to decay. The outlook combines in a
harmonious gradation what is most naked and wild
with what is most soft and cultivated in Nature, from
the open fells of Barbon and Casterton to the woods,
the lawns and meadows of Underley. Mingled with it
all is the scent of the flower-gardens adjoining the
footpath along the brow, and a delicious sense of rest
and seclusion.
But there is little seclusion about Ingleton unless it
be in a " pot-hole " or cavern. The place is a well-
* FoYS Clavigera. Letter 52. A trifle of exaggeration in his praise
of the scenery must, I fear, be put down to pique from the design
of a cast-iron ornament on a seat whence the view is observable.
His Will 99
known, or at least well-advertised resort of the holiday-
makers of Lancashire and Yorkshire, who delight in
cheap trips and picnic rambles amongst the " natural
curiosities " of the neighbourhood, but it lies on such
a splendid stretch of open limestone moorland that
one may readily credit its claims as a healthy habitation
— at least for those who stay there long enough. It is
not surprising that both William Hardy and his wife
should there have outlived the fiftieth anniversary of
their wedding-day — he by two and she by seven years.
They were buried at Ingleton, he on February 7, 1763,
and she on February i, 1768.
By his will* he gives all his property to his wife,
directing, nevertheless, that at her death his children
shall have the following legacies : Edward ^^5, Thomas
£135, John £20, Joseph £20, William £25, and Elizabeth
Gumming £40. The reasons for the variation in the
amounts bequeathed must be left to the reader's
conjectures. The testator's personal effects were
valued as follows : " Purse and apparel ;^io ; money
at interest £300 ; goods above stairs £10 ; goods below
stairs £15 los. ; total ;^335 los." As no farming
effects are mentioned it seems the description of
" husbandman " which he assumes in his will refers
rather to his status than his occupation, and perhaps
intimates some lowly pride in being the last of his
line to follow the calling of his ancestors.
§ 2. John Hardy of Kirkburton and his descendants
(1688-1871)
The younger brothers of William Hardy of Park
♦ Proved by his widow in ' the Lancaster Consistory Court,
May 30, 1763.
I oo Ch ildren of Edwa rd Ha rdy
House both migrated to Yorkshire in early hfe. They
were both no doubt educated at the old grammar school
at Kirkby Lonsdale, but the records of the time have
been lost. It does not appear that either of them
went to the University, and we may therefore attribute
their clerical preferment in the first instance to the
Rev. John Briggs, who was Vicar of Kirkby Lonsdale
from 1676 to 1737, and whose burial is there recorded
at the age of ninety-one. Almost contemporary with
him was the Rev. Joseph Briggs, vicar from 1662 to
1727 of Kirkburton in the West Riding of Yorkshire,
where he was buried at the age of eighty-five.* Re-
searches at Wakefield, the birthplace of Joseph,
contradict the supposition that John was his brother,
but I think it may safely be assumed that they were
cousins,! and it was due to this connection that John
Hardy was in 1714 % appointed master of the grammar
school which had just been established at Kirkburton
* H. J. Morehouse, Hist. Kirkburton (1861), p. 68.
f It is not unlikely that they were both grandsons or grand-
nephews of Richard Briggs, a native of Halifax, who died in 1636,
having been since about 1585 sub-master or headmaster of Norwich
School (A. W. Jessop in Notes and Queries, 5th S., Vol. VII, p. 507).
No doubt Joseph, as stated in Blomefield's Hist. Norfolk (8vo ed., Vol.
IV, p. 221), was related to Augustin Briggs of Norwich, but the pedi-
gree tracing them back to Salle in Norfolk is, according to Dr.
Jessop, quite untrustworthy. In the Kirkby Lonsdale registers
there appear two or three branches of a family of Briggs mainly
settled at Lupton, and these were possibly related to the vicar,
but the earliest entry is in 1664, when the vicar was aged about
eighteen. If, therefore, he had any family connection wuth Kirkby
Lonsdale, the most we can suppose is that his father migrated
thither in middle life ; and this is quite consistent with the supposed
West Riding origin of the whole family. The vicar, we may note,
does not appear to have had any children. His wife, aged eighty-
five, predeceased him by less than six months.
t H. J. Morehouse, Hist, of Kirkburton (1861), p. 68.
John Hardy, Schoolmaster loi
by the inhabitants.* It was a " grammar school "
of a most elementary kind. Endowments amounting
to about £500 were acquired in 1721 and 1722 to
teach twenty or thirty poor children reading gratis,
and writing and arithmetic " at half-charges," besides
something for their clothes, f At Kirkburton John
Hardy married in February, 1717, Mary, daughter of
Thomas Mokeson of Yew Tree, a homestead in that
parish, where it is said the family had resided as
yeomen for three hundred years. Of John Mokeson,
the last of Yew Tree, and Olive his wife, there is, as
Dr. Morehouse calls it, this " singular record," that
they had thirty children, of whom four reached
adult age.
From the record of his marriage it appears that the
schoolmaster was then also curate. The vicar was
now in his seventy-ninth year, and probably from this
time till his death ten years later, though he resided
in the parish, he left the curate to perform the best
part of his duties. Of his successor, however, the
Rev. Robert D'Oyley, m.a., who was also Vicar of
Windsor, it is said % that during the whole period of
his connection with Kirkburton, which was nearly
forty years, he only paid three visits to it. Conse-
♦ A tablet in the school-building, presumably placed there in
1736, says it w£is built in 1714, but there is a declaration by Jos.
Briggs, the vicar, dated April 28, 1709, referring to a school-house
having been " erected in the year last past " (F. A. Collins, Parish
Registers of Kirkburton, Vol. II, p. 9). It is still probable that the
school was not actually set going till the appointment of John
Hardy in 1714.
t Geo. Lawton, Collectio rer. Ecclesiastic. Ebor. (1842), p. 141 ;
Wm. White, Hist. West Riding (1838), Vol. II.
X Morehouse, p. 68.
I02 John Hardy of Kirkburton
quently John Hardy became curate-in-charge, and
remained in that position till incapacitated by
age.*
The neglect of the vicar, says Dr. Morehouse, to
appear more frequent amongst his parishioners gave
them great cause of complaint, and the reasonableness
of that discontent appears to have been felt by Mr.
Hardy, as is implied in the following facetious reply
of the vicar to his curate dated June 15, 1736 :
" Methinks Yorkshire nettles are very forward this
year and sting mightily, and surely one or more of
them had not lightly touched you when you wrote
your last, for I think I never saw so many marks and
signs of a pet as I saw in yours. . . . The people
grumble and murmur and upbraid you with my
absence. Silly people for so doing. How can you
help it ? . . . Well, to set things right I'll certainly,
God willing, be with you next summer — thh I can't
possibly, let matters require never so much. ... I
believe you never once thought how travelling is
disagreeable to the Old Fellow — how hard a matter
to get a supply [substitute] for Windsor. These are
things. Yesterday the B[ishop] of Sarum was here
and told me that A[rch] B[ishop] of Y[ork] could not
visit, neither would he be in your country. So, News-
paper, what art thou ? . . .
" Yours in good humour,
" D'Oyley."
That this letter does not necessarily cast an un-
favourable reflection on the energies of the curate,
* He signed as curate a terrier of the vicarage property as late as
May 25, 1748 (Collins, Kirkb. Par. Reg., Vol. II, p. 13).
Curate in Charge 103
who had also his duties as schoolmaster to perform,
will be realised when it is stated that the parish
(exclusive of the graveship of Holme, where there
was a chapel of ease) then extended over an area of
some ten thousand acres, which have since been sub-
divided between five churches, and are comprised in
a congeries of somewhat grimy suburbs lying on the
south-east side of Huddersfield. It was then of course
mainly rural ; and consisted of some half-dozen
scattered hamlets with intervening country somewhat
remarkable for its steep valleys or ravines, which must
in those days of very imperfect roads have been con-
siderable obstacles to the communications between
the acting parson and his flock.
Kirkburton, however, was by no means an out-of-
the-way place, and must have been in many ways —
and, not the least important, in the character of its
inhabitants — a great contrast to Barbon. It lies with
its numerous villages within an area devoted to the
wool trade, and the village of Kirkburton itself lay on
the coach road running from Sheffield through Barns-
ley, Skipton, and Settle to Lancaster.*
If we may assume that the Rev. John Hardy in
his ministrations followed the ideals of the vicar with
whom for ten years he was first associated as curate,
we may conclude that he performed his parson's
functions in no indifferent manner. The Rev. Joseph
Briggs was the author of two little works still extantf
which both reflect creditably on his sincerity as the
shepherd of his flock. In the preface to the former,
The Church Catechism Explained, pubhshed in 1696
* Ogilby's Roads, editions of 1699 and 1719.
+ Copies are in the library of the British Museum.
I04 John Hardy of Kirkburton
and again in 1722, he says : " I account it to myself
a great blessing that being by a sickly constitution of
body forced from the breasts of my mother, that
famous school of the prophets, the University of
Cambridge, a very good providence cast me under the
wings and guidance of an aged divine — grave, learned,
and pious ; a truly loyal subject to, and sufferer for,
his Sovereign (1648),* a most orthodox son of the
Church," whose admonition led his pupil to the study
of the Catechism. In order to promote this study
amongst the youth of Kirkburton, the vicar tran-
scribed — " a great drudgery " — the whole of the
questions and answers, and then found it necessary
to have them printed. This print proving faulty, he
had a reprint, to which he added the " Catechist's
Enlargement," thus originating the present volume.
Mr. Briggs's other work, published in 1704, is
called Catholick Unity and Church Communion, or
the Christian's Duty to communicate constantly with
the Church of England ; with a just reproof of several
novel and schismatical notions and -practices [occasional
conformity] . . . suited to the well-meaning country-
man's capacity. The prefaces to both these little books
and the dedicatory letters to the Archbishop of York
show their author to have been a man honestly devoted
to what he conceived to be the spiritual welfare of his
parishioners, a very different person from the typical
eighteenth-century pluralist, of whom we shall have
something to say in the sequel. Notwithstanding
* King Charles was beheaded in January, 1648-9. The " loyal
sufferer " was Briggs's father-in-law, Henry Robinson, under whom
he was curate at Swillington, and from whom he seems to have in-
herited his somewhat rigid Church principles (Morehouse, Hist.
Kirkburton, p. 66).
His Family 105
Joseph Briggs's " weakly constitution " in his early
days he lived to the age of eighty-five.
It may seem rather remarkable that as curate and
village schoolmaster of Kirkburton, where the gross
income of the benefice is to-day put at little more
than £300 a year, the Rev. John Hardy should have
so far taken root in the soil as to found, so to speak,
a local family which retained their hereditary estate
in the parish for more than a hundred years after his
death. His early experiences on his father's home-
stead at Beckfoot may have perhaps enabled him to
deal shrewdly in land or even in sheep or wool. He
died September 20, 1756, and lies buried with his wife
in the nave of the parish church. By his will he gave
a house and land in one or other of the Kirkburton or
neighbouring townships to each of his four children,
all of whose baptisms are duly recorded in the parish
register. In the will they appear as Rebecca Bingley,
widow ; Thomas ; William ; and Betty, who is
afterwards described as the wife of Benjamin North of
Almondbury, merchant. " Widow Bingley " was buried
at Kirkburton, December 20, 1811, aged ninety-three,
and thus holds the record in our annals for longevity.
William was educated at the ancient grammar school
in the adjoining parish of Almondbury, as appears
from his admission at Trinity College, Cambridge,
March 31, 1741. He took his B.A. in 1745, and is
mentioned in his father's will as a clergyman ; but
we are not able to trace him or his descendants further,
and shall find good reason in the sequel to suppose he
died without issue.
To Thomas was left the property called Birksgate
(or Birks-yate) in the township of Thurstonland, which
io6 John Hai'-dy of Kirkbu7^foii
became the residence of the head of the family. Thomas
was a tanner, and had a family of ten children, all
sons, of whom seven, Thomas, John, Edward, Joseph,
Charles Marius, Julius, and Benjamin, survived him.
He died March 19, 1777, and lies buried with his wife
in Kirkburton churchyard. By his will he gave to
his sons Thomas and Edward the Birksgate property,
and to John and Charles an estate at Upper Cumber-
worth, which he probably inherited from his brother
William ; and it may be taken as some slight indica-
tion of the values of these properties that he charged
on the Birksgate property in favour of his three other
sons three legacies of ;£30o apiece. A bequest to his
wife of " one bed and beding for the same " reads only
less oddly than Mrs. William Shakespeare's " second-
best bed " ; but as she is appointed a trustee of the
will, it can scarcely indicate ill-feeling, but rather that
she was already well provided for, for he gives the
residue of his personal estate to Thomas and Edward,
the devisees of Birksgate. In fact, it seems probable
from what follows that the wife was a lady of fortune.
We have no clue to her origin. Oddly again, her
husband does not mention even her christian name.
She died March 6, 1795, aged sixty-nine, and is called
on the family grave " Martha," though in the register
of burials she is called " Mary."
Thomas the tanner was succeeded by his eldest son,
who is described in his own will as Thomas Hardy of
Birksgate, gentleman. In the course of a long life (he died
in 1836, aged eighty-seven or eighty-eight) he seems to
have accumulated, in part probably by means of money
left him by his mother, a considerable amount of
property in the neighbourhood of Kirkburton, besides
His Son and Grandson 107
some at Manchester. His personal estate was sworn
at " under £2000," which imphcs that it exceeded
;^i5oo ; but this of course did not include his property
in land, which, having no children of his own, he settled
by will* elaborately on the descendants of his brothers.
It seems from the will of his brother Edward, who was
of Cumberworth in Silkston parish, that on the latter's
death without issue in 1827, if not before, Thomas
Hardy had acquired the half-share of Birksgate which
Edward had taken under their father's will. It may
be conjectured that both these brothers as well as
their brother John, who was of Penistone, acquired
some of their wealth by the possession of land which
contained coal.
It is worth noting that Edward Hardy of Cumber-
worth by his will devises to a trustee all his right,
title, and interest to and in a chapel at Shelley in
Kirkburton parish, " for the use of the Methodist
Conference late in connection with the Rev. John
Wesley," built upon land purchased in 1783. That
the grandson of a man who was brought into intimate
and lifelong familiarity with one of the most crying
abuses of the Church in the eighteenth century should
have been a follower of Wesley is suggestive of the
tradition in the family of a wholesome sense of right
and duty.
Under the settlement created by the will of Thomas
Hardy of Birksgate, gentleman, the first in possession
was Thomas Hardy, a doctor in practice at Walworth
in Surrey, who had obtained his licence as an apothe-
cary in 1824 and his diploma as a surgeon in 1825.
* Proved both at York and in the Canterbury Prerogative Court
in London.
io8 John Hardy of Kirkburton
He was the son of John Hardy of Penistone, and seems
at the time of his succeeding to his uncle's estate to
have been already in good circumstances. Walworth
in 1836 was a suburb of respectable villas ; and a
villa, using the term in its then less degraded sense,
would pay, I imagine, not less than half a guinea a
visit. The doctor's will disposes of a considerable
amount of property in Walworth, Chelsea, and Syden-
ham. Under the terms of the will of his uncle he was
bound to reside at Birksgate, which he accordingly
did till his death in 1848. He was an active county
magistrate,* and is said to have been a Unitarian by
religion, driving regularly behind a pair of cream-
coloured horses to the chapel at Lidget in a remote part
of the parish called Wooldale.f
The chapel at Lidget has a history going back to the
Restoration, when hundreds of ministers were ejected
from their livings for refusing to submit to the Act
of Uniformity. The Morehouses of that day and since
had been its constant supporters, J and their descendant
Dr. H. J. Morehouse, the historian of Kirkburton, has
told me that Mr. Hardy of Birksgate was one of his
intimate friends, and used often to speak to him of his
Westmorland descent.
He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son,
Edward Hardy of Shepley Hall, another residence in
Kirkburton parish which had been purchased by
Thomas Hardy the second in 1775. On Edward's
death without issue the family property passed to his
* Morehouse, Kirkbtirion, p. 104.
t This was told me by Canon Hulbert, late Vicar of Almondbury,
and by Mrs. Collins, wife of the Vicar of Kirkburton, on the authority
of old parish clerks.
X C. A. Hulbert, Hist. Almondbury, p. 375.
Dr. Thomas Hardy, J P. 1 09
brother Alfred, the next tenant for hfe, who, however,
had settled in South Australia. By him and his son,
who would then apparently be tenant-in-tail in re-
mainder, the settled estates were about the year 1871
disentailed and sold.*
§ 3. Thomas Hardy of Mirfield (1683-1739)
In order to preserve some continuity as due to the
unity of place we have somewhat digressed from
our usual plan of advancing generation by generation.
We must now return to the children of Edward Hardy
of Beckfoot. His second son Thomas in 1716, two
years after the third son became a schoolmaster at
Kirkburton, was presented by Sir John Armitage to
the vicarage of Mirfield, which lies close to the south-
west of Dewsbury, and consequently but a few miles
north of Kirkburton. Sir John Armitage of Kirklees
was the head of a family spread in innumerable
branches through Kirkburton, Almondbury, and the
adjoining district.!
The benefice of Mirfield, a small parish compared
with Kirkburton, was in 1707 only worth £18 a year,
but in 1719 Sir John Armitage endowed it with £200,
and Queen Anne's Bounty added the same amount,
and in 1732 £200 more ; and in 1831 the annual value
was put at £242. J Judging from these figures and
the slight record we have of the career of his two sons,
it might seem the vicar made the most of the income
derived from his parish. He may perhaps have married
* I had this information from Mrs. ColUns.
t Parish Registers of Kirkburton, ed. by Mrs. F. A. ColUns,
Vol. II, p. xlviii ; C. A. Hulbert, Annals of Almondbury, p. 236.
X Markham's Parish Accounts, British Museum MSS. Add.
"397 ; Wm. \Vhite's Hist, etc.. West Riding {1838).
I lo Thomas Hardy of Mirfield
a fortune, but on this subject we can furnish nothing
but conjecture. He died at Mirfield, and was buried
there on December 19, 1739. No record of his will
or administration of his effects being found at York
leads to the conclusion that he had no property to
leave behind him.
CHAPTER VII
THE STATESMEN, THEIR SCHOOLS, AND THE CHURCH
" Some men thought therefore that D. Medcalfe [Dr. Mcdcalfe,
Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, about 1533] was parciall
to Northrenmen, but sure I am of this, that Northrenmen were
parciall in doing more good and giving more lands to the forder-
ance of learning than any other contriemen in those dayes did." —
Roger Ascham, 77/1? Scholemasier^ book ii. (Ed. Arber), p. 133.
ALTHOUGH Chaucer in his immortal Prologue to
l\. the Canterbury Tales has made his worthy Parson
own brother to an equally worthy Ploughman, it may
seem strange that some three centuries later the two
younger sons of a yeoman-farmer such as Edward
Hardy of Beckfoot, scarcely able to write his name,
should have been competent to take up the position
of ministers in the Church of England as by law
established. And this would undoubtedly have been
unusual in the case of yeoman-farmers in general.
But amongst the Westmorland statesmen things were
otherwise. The explanation is well set out in an
assistant-commissioner's Memorandum on the West-
morland Schools by D. C. Richmond, appended to
Reports on Northern Schools issued under the Schools
Inquiry Commission of 1867.*
The number of endowed grammar schools in West-
morland, we find, was unusually large — greater, in
* p. goi.
Ill
1 1 2 The Statesmen, Their Schools, & the Church
fact, than that of any other county except Lancashire
and Yorkshire ; and this, though in population
Westmorland was the smallest except Rutland and
two counties in Wales. Counties of approximately
the same population contained one or two schools,
whereas in Westmorland there were forty. Fifty
years ago, says the commissioner, thirty of these schools
were still teaching Latin, whereas in 1867 the number
had dwindled to half a dozen. Three only of these
now attempted advanced Latin and Greek, viz.
Appleby, Heversham, and Kirkby Lonsdale (Hever-
sham, it may be noted in passing, was founded by
Edward Wilson of Low Levens, who also founded the
fortunes of the Wilsons of Dallam Tower), and only
Appleby and Heversham had now pupils of an age to
send to the university, though in the case of Kirkby
Lonsdale this was a special point intended to be pro-
vided for by the school charter.*
Mr. Richmond's explanation of the large number
of schools in Westmorland and their decay in modern
times, i.e. since the so-called industrial revolution at
the end of the eighteenth century, is what chiefly
interests us. They are due, he states, " to the habits
and characteristics of a class of men now declining in
numbers and importance, but who were formerly a
great power in this part of the country, viz. the small
landowners or statesmen." These men, he says,
clearly distinguished from the labouring classes, looked
for something better than the ordinary village school
could give, but they were not rich enough to send their
sons to a boarding-school. They had very different
ideas from those of farmers and tradespeople in the
* D, C. Richmond's Report on Kirkby Lonsdale ^School , p. 365.
Learned Simplicity 1 1 3
south of England. They had no idea of their sons
learning the manners of the superior classes, and their
strong independence and self-sufficiency, their con-
tempt for mere externals and pride of class, which
admitted no desire to struggle out of it, led them to
look at home for education. They would not object
to meeting the lower classes in the village school, if
there was a scholar who could teach them what they
wanted ; otherwise they would walk long distances
to a grammar school, or lodge in the neighbourhood
^vith relations or friends. Latin and Greek were
especially sought after. Homer was a favourite author,
and the scholastic profession was held in high honour.
Moreover, with the larger statesmen it was almost a
matter of course for at least one younger son to go into
the Church.
The following quotation from Hodgson's West-
morland as it was* written apparently about the
beginning of the nineteenth century, will serve as an
anticipatory comment on the biographies outlined in
the preceding and the next generation of our pedigree :
" Families that could afford it sent their sons to one
of the universities, and the exhibitions of Queen's
College, Oxford, and other colleges annually main-
tained a number of youths whose frugal habits,
industry, and abilities almost invariably led them to
honourable distinction. But the greatest number
completed their education in the head schools, and
about their twentieth year became schoolmasters, in
which employment they continued till they were at
age to enter holy orders. This class of scholars was
dispersed all over England, and mostly spent their
* Lonsdale Magazine, Vol. Ill, p. 382.
I
1 1 4 The Statesmen, Their Schools, & the Church
lives in stipendiary curacies or small livings. In this
scholastic age the yeoman and the shepherd could
enliven their employments or festivities with recita-
tions from the beauties of Virgil, idyls of Theocritus,
or wars of Troy. But when a shorter and easier way
was opened to the introduction of youth into opulent
prospects, this learned simplicity began to disappear.
Teachers of writing and arithmetic, who had hitherto
wandered from village to village, now became necessary
appendages to the larger schools, and those of inferior
note were soon almost exclusively employed in quali-
fying youth for the counting-house or the Excise."
The disappearance of the statesman and his replace-
ment by small and poor tenant-farmers which ensued
in the nineteenth century tended in the same direction.
There was no longer the same demand for education ;
the curate and schoolmaster became separate pro-
fessions, and the standard of the latter was lowered.*
The foundation of Kirkby Lonsdale school goes back
to 1582. On April 16 in that year a body of feoffees,
headed by Mr. Edward Middleton of Middleton
Hall, received from Mr. Godsalve a sum of £100 towards
its erection, f The scheme no doubt existed still
earlier, and it is not unlikely that the money paid over
by Godsalve consisted to some extent of gifts and
legacies which had been accumulating for some years.
Thus the will of John Stoctell (Stockdale) of Mansergh
Hall houses, dated February 8, 1580-1, contains a
* Richmond's Memorandum on Westmorland Schools. Never-
theless, in 191 1 the Board of Education reported that next to
Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, Westmorland had the highest
number in proportion to population of " efficient Secondary schools "
in England and Wales.
t Seventh Report of the Charity Commissioners (1822).
Kirkhy Lonsdale School 1 1 5
legacy of two marks {£1 6s. 8d,) " to the preferment
of a free school at Kirkbye." The charter of incor-
poration by letters patent of Queen Elizabeth bears
date July 3, 1591. This prescribed that the master
should be able to read and compose Greek and Latin
verses, and read and interpret Greek grammar and
authors, and should be born in Westmorland, York-
shire, or Lancashire. Numerous additional gifts and
legacies followed from time to time for the immediate
benefit of the school, and exhibitions were also
founded for poor scholars proceeding from the school
to the universities. At Christ's College, Cambridge,
three exhibitions were provided by Thomas Wilson
(probably of Underley in Kirkby Lonsdale and of
Heversham), dated August 9, 1626, and three more
under the will of Thomas Otway, Bishop of Ossory in
1692. At Queen's College, Oxford, seven exhibitions
were provided in 1638 by Henry Wilson (probably also
of Underley) out of certain tithes in Betham parish,
from which we may perhaps conclude that the founder
was of the same family as the owners of Dallam Tower
and Park House.
The Bishop of Ossory, there can be little doubt, was
of kin to the Otways of Beckside Hall in Middleton,
already mentioned. Though a Christ's man, he was
not educated at Kirkby Lonsdale, but at Winchester,
his father being Vicar of Alderbury in Wiltshire.*
It may well be that Kirkby Lonsdale furnished the
latter with the learning on the strength of which he
took orders, and that this actuated his son in benefiting
the school. His will also provides for exhibitions at
Christ's for scholars from the school at Sedbergh,
* Diet. National Biog. Errata.
ii6 The Statesmen^ Their Schools, & the Church
which is the Yorkshire parish immediately adjoining
Middleton. As already mentioned, a branch of the
Otways migrated from Middleton to Ingmire Hall in
this parish before the period of the Civil War. It may
be mentioned here that Thomas Otway the dramatist,
the most famous of the name, was in all probability
of the Middleton stock. His father was Humphrey
Otway, Vicar of Wolbeding in Sussex, who, it appears,
from his admission at Christ's College, May 25, 1627,
though born at Brafhn in Hertfordshire, where his
father was vicar, received the last part of his education
at Sedbergh.
And finally, let it not be forgotten that the most
sterling of English geniuses who adorned the eighteenth
century was of Westmorland breed. Richard Hogarth,
who was a younger son of a Westmorland statesman,
brought his learning from his native Bampton to
London and set up as a schoolmaster in Bartholomew
Close, where his son William was born on November
10, 1697, His family can be traced in Westmorland
as far back as the time of Henry VHI.* In the
personal character of William Hogarth the statesman's
sturdiness and self-sufficiency are extremely well
marked. And it is worth mentioning here as a thing
not generally known that there are at least two
portraits by Hogarth apparently painted in Lonsdale.
They represent Mrs. Margaret Mawdesley and another
of the daughters of one of the Godsalves of
Rigmaden in Mansergh township, and are amongst
the family portraits of the Gibsons of Whelprigg.
Both are of the familiar type represented in the
National Gallery by Lavinia Fenton and Hogarth's
* Austin Dobson, Hogarth, chap. ii.
The Otivays and Hogarths 1 1 7
sister, and in each case the hair and bodice are decorated
with the pearl necklace which is almost equally familiar
as a studio property in the artist's female portraits. It
would be interesting if one could trace any further
connection between Hogarth and the native county
of his ancestors.
CHAPTER VIII
SIXTH GENERATION
Division i. The children of William Hardy of
Park House
THE register at Tunstal contains six entries of
baptisms of children of " William Hardy of
Park House " with dates as follows :
Elizabeth, August 20, 1711.
Isabella, February 15, 1712-3.
Edward, July 31, 1714.
Thomas, January 15, 1715-6.
John, January 9, 1716-7, and
WilUam (" fourth son "), March 30, 1719.
In their father's will is also mentioned Joseph (who,
as will appear later, was born in the year ending
August 5, 1723, though, as already stated, he was not
baptised till February 11, 1733).
George, who, as already mentioned, was baptised at
Kirkby Lonsdale, March 16, 1725, is not mentioned
in the will, and we may therefore presume he died in
his father's lifetime without issue. His baptismal name
may be taken as some intimation that his father was
no partisan of the house of Stuart. The passing of
a Jacobite army through Kendal on its way from
Scotland to be defeated at Preston in 1715 must have
u8
Elizabeth ; Isabel/a ; William ; George 1 1 9
been still well remembered in Westmorland and Lan-
cashire.
Of aU the above-named children Elizabeth seems
to be the only one who remained in the north after her
father's death. We find her mentioned as " Mrs.
Gumming of Kirkby Lonsdale, widow," in the will of
her cousin John Hardy, son of the Vicar of Mirfield,
which bears the date October 21, 1776. We have no
record of her marriage, but it probably took place at
Kirkby Lonsdale. Her husband may have been the
son of Edward Gumming of Holme House, Mansergh,
in that parish, yeoman, whose will was proved in June,
1729, in the Richmond Archdeaconry Court. The
family had been in the neighbourhood for generations.
In the registers of Thornton in Lonsdale the first
legible entry of a baptism is that of James, son of
Edmund Gumminge, on May 25, 1576.*
Isabella, the next daughter, died unmarried, and
was buried by her parents at Ingleton, December 6,
1762, only two months before her father, and two days
before he made his will.
Of the other children Edward and Joseph settled as
clergymen in Kent, and Thomas and John as citizens
of London. Of William we have no further trace
except the mention of his widow in the will of his
brother Edward, dated May 20, 1796. From this we
may conclude that he was then dead without issue,
and from his not being named in the will of his cousin
John just mentioned that he died before October 21,
1776.
Edward, as appears from the records of Ghrist's
Gollege, Cambridge, where he is described as the son of
* R. R. and M. Balderston, Ingleton Bygone and Present, p. 102.
I20 Children of William Hardy of Park House
" William Hardy, born at Park House in the County
of Lancaster," was educated at the grammar school
of Kirkby Lonsdale under " Mr. Noble," and admitted
to the college in his eighteenth year as a sizar on June
i6, 1733.* It does not appear, but it seems likely that
he also had the benefit of one of the exhibitions of
which, as mentioned above, Christ's College was
possessed.
No doubt Joseph Hardy also had his education at
Kirkby Lonsdale school, but, as we shall see later, he
did not go to Christ's direct from school, and this is
probably the reason why the place of his education
is not mentioned in the Admission Book.
§ I. Thomas and John Hardy of Leadenhall Street
and their children (1716-1804)
In order to deal chronologically with the events
recorded in the careers of the four brothers we will
postpone our account of Edward, though the eldest,
till the last. His brother John, who seems, as far as
we can ascertain, to have been the pioneer in the
move to the south, was admitted a freeman of the
City of London, as appears from the records of the
Musicians' Company, on February 26, 1745. He
came on the livery of the company November 23,
1752. He was then living " near St. Peter's Alley,
Cornhill," and is described as a cutler. How or why
he adopted this occupation we have no evidence.
He was thirty when he obtained his freedom, and
* " Edwardus Hardy, Gnlielmi Filius, natus apud Parkhouse in
com. Lancast^'. Uteris instructus apud Kirkby Lonsdale sub Mag''°.
Noble admissus est sizator sub Mag™. Trant anno act. 18." Until
the discovery of this crucial record I had no clue whatever to any
earher generation in the pedigree.
John Hardy, Hardware man 121
had doubtless entered the business as an apprentice —
possibly in Shcflield or some other Yorkshire town
— many years earlier. In that case the advancement
of his business may well have been the inducement for
his coming to London. We can scarcely suggest any
other. The only friends of his family of whom we
have any trace at this time in the City were two great-
grandsons of the Rev. Joseph Briggs, the Vicar of
Kirkburton, Hobart Briggs and John Briggs. In 1745
the former was in the E.xcise Office, and the latter in
the Post Office.* Although some ten years younger
than John Hardy, it is not unlikely that they preceded
him in their arrival in London, as they would naturally
enter these offices direct from school. Their father was
Rector of Holt in Norfolk, and they were perhaps
educated at the grammar school there, of which the
Fishmongers' Company were governors, and so they
may have had connections in the City.
From 1754 to 1765 John Hardy appears in the books
of the Musicians' Company and various directories
as a hardwareman at " the corner of Leadenhall
Street," but in 1766 his address is " Birchin Lane."t
The explanation of his removal is found in the disas-
trous fire which happened on November 7, 1765. The
Gentleman's Magazine for that month J contains an
account of the fire illustrated by a plan, which gives
the names and businesses of the occupiers of the
numerous houses involved. " Hardy, hardwareman,"
appears at the corner of Leadenhall Street and Bishops-
gate Street. Immediately at the back of this house
* Blomefield, Hist. Norfolk, Vol. II (1745), p. 640.
t Kent's London Directory,
t P- 535-
12 2 Children of William Hardy of Park House
and facing Bishopsgate Street is " Rutland, barber,"
and in tkis shop early in the morning the fire suddenly
started. For want of water and with the aid of a
southerly wind it soon spread along both sides of
Bishopsgate Street as far as Threadneedle Street.
About seven o'clock the wind shifted, and the fire
went no further towards the north. From the meeting-
point, however, of Leadenhall Street, Bishopsgate
Street, Gracechurch Street, and Cornhill, where all
four corners were blazing at once, it spread east and
west, destroying some half-dozen houses on the north
side of Cornhill, and in Leadenhall Street half a score
on the north, besides two or three opposite. Altogether,
it is said, forty-nine houses were destroyed and fifteen
damaged. Several lives were lost, but mainly, if not
entirely, as the result of faUing ruins.*
In the following year a brand-new row of houses
with shops was built on the north side of Leadenhall
Street on the site of those burnt down, the frontage
being set back slightly in a curve to widen the thorough-
fare in correspondence with a similar arrangement in
Cornhill. An elaborate engraving showing the elevation
of the new buildings is given by Wilkinson in Londina
Illusirata.'f From this it appears that the corner house
now occupied not only its former site, but also that
of the house adjoining, and had a frontage on Leaden-
hall Street of about thirty-five feet, which was more
* A good account of the fire gathered from contemporary news-
papers and other sources of information is in Vol. I of the larger edition
(in the Guildhall Library) of Robert Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata
(1818-1825), opposite plate No. VIII. This is a plan of the fire
identical with that in the Gentleman' s Magazine, except that it is on
a larger scale.
t Vol. II, Plate No. CXXXII, in the Guildhall Library Edition.
Thomas Hardy, Hardivareman 123
than half as much again as any of its neighbours. The
" return " frontage on Bishopsgate Street was some-
what longer. In fact, the site was identical with that
occupied by the corner house at the present time, and
bore the same number, 158, in Leadenhall Street.*
The entrance from Leadenhall Street is through a
shop-front consisting of no less than seventy-two panes
of glass, without counting the subdivision into three
caused by the arched heads inserted into the top row,
an extra ornament further distinguishing the hardware
shop from the others. Above are three floors, each
with a row of four plain windows, and above these two
attic windows partly hidden by the parapet. The
shop door, not being in the middle, but decidedly
nearer the east side of the house, suggests that there
was a private entrance in Bishopsgate Street, and
possibly an internal subdivision into two. It is
therefore not surprising that in the next record where
we can trace the corner house we find it in double
occupation. In Bald\vin's London Guide for 1770 we
find " John & T. Hardy, Hardwaremen, comer of
Leadenhall Street and Bishopsgate Street " — an entry
which is continued in various directories down to 1792.
The supposition that the two brothers joined together
on the rebuilding of the house after the lire fits in with
Thomas Hardy's admission to the freedom of the
* In Wilkinson's plate the houses are not numbered, but he
gives the names of the occupiers as they were apparently in 1825.
The numbers are given with the site of each house in Horwood's
Map of London of 1799. From this it may be seen how the site of
the three large houses over which the numbers 150 to 157 (inclusive)
are now distributed was then divided between eight separate
dwelUngs, including the Bull Inn and another house, formerly the
Nag's Head, which were reached by passages and courtyards, and
had no frontages on the street.
124 Children of Wilham Hardy of Park House
City on May 6, 1766. This is recorded in the books of
the Carpenters' Company, of which he was enrolled as
a liveryman on July 7, 1767, being described as of
Leadenhall Street, hardwareman.
On turning to the registers of St. Peter's-upon-
Cornhill,* in which parish this end of Leadenhall Street
is situated, we find as early as December 18, 1757, the
baptism of Henry, son of Thomas Hardy ; which, if it
relates to Thomas Hardy the hardwareman, is the
earliest record we have of his connection with the City.
In the same register is the baptism of " Thomas, son
of John and Christian Hardy," February 20, 1770,
and the burial of Christian Hardy in the south aisle of
the church on March 18, 177 1. Of the son Thomas
we have no further trace. The uncommon name of
Christiana being bestowed, as we shall find later, on
a niece and again on a grandniece of John Hardy the
hardwareman leaves little doubt as to his being the
husband of this Christian, and it may also be inferred
that he was married to her as early as 1756, when the
niece named after her was christened. The form of
her own baptismal name, I think, indicates a northern
origin.
Both the brothers had other children, as we shall
see later, besides those just referred to, but their
baptisms do not appear at St. Peter's. Nevertheless,
during the five-and-twenty years of their residence at
their new house the hardwaremen continued in some
degree their connection with the church. From the
manuscript collections of Robert Wilkinsonf in the
* Printed down to 1772 by the Harleian Society,
t See the second of the quarto volumes, pp. 14-22. Wilkinson,
the author or pubUsher of Londina Illustrata, was a resident in the
5/. Peters on Comhill 125
Guildhall Library it appears that in 1767 John Hardy
was appointed a trustee of some of the parish property,
and continued as such till September 13, 17(12, when
it is recorded that he had left the parish. Thomas
was overseer in 17S0-1 and churchwarden in 1782-3.
Amongst the plates issued by Wilkinson in 1S25 in
connection with the church is a plan, showing the
pews and seats with certain occupants' names, " given
in 1782 by Mr. Thomas Hardy, then the upper church-
warden," to the sextonesses " for their discretion."
In this plan a spacious compartment at the west end
of the church is allotted as the " churchwarden's
pew," but it is remarkable that none of the Hardy
family are named as occupying seats in the capacity
of inhabitants of the parish.* Owing to the small
number of householders in the minute City parishes
it may well be supposed that every parishioner who
was fit for the various parochial offices was in his turn
called on to serve, although he may not have habitually
worshipped in the church.
Thomas Hardy became a member of the court of the
Carpenters' Company in 1791 and Middle Warden in
1794. He was nominated for Upper Warden in 1795,
but not elected. His brother John was Master of the
Musicians' Company in 1775, in 1792 a trustee, and
parish and trustee of the parish property as early as 1792. His five
volumes of manuscript collections were intended for a history of the
parish, which he never published, but were used for a history of the
church, pubhshed after his death in 1S37. He published several
plates illustrating the church and its monuments, most of which are
collected in a volume in the Guildhall Library. The complete set
of eighteen is catalogued in Wm. Upcott's Bibliography of English
Topography, Vol. II, p. 709.
* This plan is in the Collection of Prints relating to Comhill
Ward in the Guildhall Library.
126 Children of William Hardy of Park House
in 1793 treasurer. After this there was a difficulty
about his accounts, but an agreement was at last come
to between the lawyers as to what was due, and, this
being paid over in 1801, the treasurer resigned.
Meanwhile it appears from the directories that in
1792 the firm had moved to 127 Leadenhall Street,
where they continued till 1801, and then disappeared.
No. 127 is in the parish of St. Andrew, Undershaft.
It appears from Horwood's map and from the in-
formation I have picked up from the parish clerk, who
remembered it as it was before it was pulled down to
make room for the offices of the P. and O. Company,
that it was a great contrast to No. 158 in point of size
and position ; and coupling this with the facts above
mentioned concerning the Musicians' and Carpenters'
Companies, there seems ground for supposing that
the removal of the two old men from their prominent
street corner was the result of something in the nature
of a financial catastrophe. Had they left any con-
siderable property some trace of them would be found
amongst the wills and administrations at Doctors'
Commons, and here I have searched for them in vain.
They were both buried at St. Peter's, Cornhill, in the
south aisle, where John's wife Christian had already
been laid, Thomas on January 3, 1799, John on May
23, 1804.
It appears from the will of Isabella Hardy, the
daughter of Thomas, proved in London in December,
1796,* that he had also another daughter, " Mrs.
Hanmer," and a son, Thomas Flasby Hardy ; and
that at the date of this will, October 29, 1796, Isabella
and her brother were living at Leadenhall Street with
* Canterbury, Prerog. Court.
The End of the Hardware men i 27
their uncle John, his daughter Maria, and his nephew,
Robert Cumming. The latter, who was of course the
son of Mrs. Elizabeth Cumming of Kirkby Lonsdale,
seems more likely to have had a hand in carrying on
the business than Thomas Flasby Hardy, who is
referred to in his sister's will as " late of Jamaica."
The contents of the will confirm the supposition
that the father and uncle were no longer men of wealth.
Isabella does not mention her father at all, and only
refers to her uncle John as owing her money. Her
brother, too, was in her debt to the amount of £1200.
She releases her " dear brother " and her uncle from
the money they owe her ; gives her clothes and trinkets
in London to her cousin Maria, and her clothes and
trinkets at Pill, near Bristol, to Mrs. Hanmer and her
daughter Maria Hanmer, who with her brother Thomas
Hardy Hanmer are specially provided for by giving
them a sort of claim for the £1200 due from their
uncle Thomas, " late of Jamaica," on their coming of
age. The will was proved by Maria Hardy as executrix
alone. Thomas Flasby Hardy was appointed executor,
but did not join in the probate. That office, though
accompanied by the gift of the residue of the estate,
promised, as we may imagine, less profit than em-
barrassment.
§ 2. Joseph Hardy of Sutton Valence (1723-1786)
Having disposed of Thomas and John Hardy and
their descendants as far as we know of them we
come next to their younger brother Joseph. Our
earliest record of him is his admission as a sizar at
Christ's College, Cambridge, on March 20, 1746,
where he is described as being already in holy orders.
128 Children of William Hardy of Park House
As he was then about twenty-three years of age we
may suppose he had obtained a curacy and had been
doing the work of some absentee parson in the north ;
or perhaps he had been helping his uncle John at
Kirkburton. In any case, his university career seems
to have been only nominal, for only six months after
his admission he was appointed by the Clothworkers'
Company headmaster of their school at Sutton Valence
in Kent. This appointment was probably in some
measure due to the City connections of his brothers
the hardwaremen, but at the same time it is of some
interest to point out a still earlier connection with this
part of the country which may have had something
to do with the matter. Some five or six miles from
Sutton in the direction of Maidstone is the parish of
Loose, the incumbent of which from 1712 to 1722
was the Rev. Henry Briggs, now (in 1746) Rector of
Holt in Norfolk, chaplain-in-ordinary to the King,
and father of Hobart and John Briggs, the two young
men in the Excise and Post Office already mentioned.
He was the son of Dr. William Briggs, f.r.s., of Town
Mailing, near Maidstone, who was physician-in-
ordinary to King William, and died in 1704. Besides
his son Henry he also left a daughter, who was married
to Dennis Martin of Loose, and who therefore probably
still remained in the neighbourhood after her brother's
departure to Norfolk.*
On the other hand, not only were Henry Briggs and
his sister grandchildren of a first cousin of the Rev.
Joseph Briggs, Vicar of Kirkburton, but Henry had
married at Kirkburton on September 15, 1720, as his
second wife, Grace, a daughter of Joseph Briggs of
* Hasted, History of Kent, First Edition, Vol. II, p. 241.
Joseph Hardy and the Briggs laniily 129
Liverpool, and consequently the vicar's granddaughter.
This clearly shows the intimacy between the Yorkshire
and Kent branches of the Briggs family existing at
the time when there must also have been a close
intimacy between the former and John Hardy of
Kirkburton ; and considering Joseph Briggs's con-
nection with John Briggs, the Vicar of Kirkby Lons-
dale, it is not unlikely that it extended to the family
of John Hardy's brother William, who had remained
in the Kirkby Lonsdale neighbourhood. Indeed, it
seems very probable that the name of Joseph was given
by Wilham Hardy to his son out of comphment to
the Vicar of Kirkburton, who was perhaps Joseph
Hardy's godfather. It is noteworthy that the eldest
son of Henry Briggs was also christened Joseph, and
he would be within a year or two Joseph Hardy's
contemporary in birth.*
Joseph Hardy continued in his post as master of
Sutton Valence school from 1746 for the remaining
* According to the Briggs pedigree in Blomefield's History of
Norfolk (Vol. II, p. 640), the Vicar of Kirkburton was the son of
Samuel Briggs of Wakefield. Dr. Morehouse (Hist, of Kirkburton)
says he was the son of William, and identifies him with Joseph, son
of Wilham, baptised at Wakefield, May 25, 1C39. But there was
also a Joseph, son of Joseph Briggs, baptised there January 28,
1 640-1, and this corresponds with the admission at Magdalene
College, Cambridge, from Wakefield Grammar School, of Joseph,
son of Joseph Briggs of Wakefield, deceased, "14 annos natus "
on May 12, 1654. Again, although in Blomefield's pedigree Mrs.
Henry Briggs's father is called William, according to Mrs. F. A.
Collins (Kirkburton Parish Registers, Vol. II, p. ccclxxxi) his name was
Joseph. Thus at the time of the baptisms of Henry Briggs's son and of
Joseph Hardy, the latter's christian name had run through three
generations of the Briggs family, whereas it is entirely absent from
all the pedigrees of the Barbon Hardys previous to this time.
The untrustworthiness of Blomefield's pedigree is pointed out by
Dr. Jessop in Notes and Queries, Fifth Series, Vol. VII, p. 507.
K
1 30 Children of William Hardy of Park House
forty years of his life. Sutton Valence, otherwise
Town Sutton, lies on the steep ridge of hills running
east and west about five miles north of Staplehurst.
It has a magnificent view over the Weald of Kent and
Sussex — indeed, the outlook from the battlements of
the church tower may be called panoramic, and it is
credibly stated that in favourable states of the
atmosphere it includes a glimpse of the English
Channel. But notwithstanding his healthy surround-
ings our ancestor Joseph only lived to the age of
sixty-three, predeceasing by several years all his elder
brethren, and it is remarkable that all his eight children
except two seem to have died young.
The Clothworkers' School was founded by William
Lambe, who was master of the company in 1569-70.
From a rough woodcut, which may be seen reproduced
on a post card, it seems that the original building,
which was replaced by the present ones in Mid-
Victorian times,* was a large three-gabled house in
Tudor brick ornamented with the familiar lozenge or
diaper pattern in bricks of a different colour. On
your left as you face this building is shown the row of
almshouses, and on the right a Georgian or Queen
Anne house with an entrance under a hood on brackets
flanked on each side by two sash-windows with promi-
nent keystones. Above is a row of five similar windows
on the first floor surmounted by a deep parapet. All
these buildings abutted immediately on the street.
After the Elizabethan buildings had been pulled down
the Georgian house was left standing till about thirty
years ago, as appears from a photograph of it also
* In 1910 additional buildings were erected on an altogether
different site outside the town.
a
z z
< 5
c ^
o -
Joseph Hardy : Sutton Valence School 1 3 1
reproduced on a modern post card and labelled " the
old grammar school, Sutton Valence, Kent."
This house was undoubtedly built as a residence for
the master, and judging from its architectural style
one would say it was of at least as early a date as the
appointment of the Rev. Joseph Hardy. The records
of the company contain nothing more definite about
it than an entry in the Court Minute Book dated
December 5, 1804, showing that some time between
1594 and that time the company had expended very
considerable sums in erecting it. Before this the
master had " a convenient chamber or lodging with
other necessary rooms," which were ordered to be
constructed by the company in 1594, the founder
having himself apparently left nothing but the school
and almshouses, without providing anything for their
repair or the housing of the master. The original
endowment, according to Hasted,* was a good house
and garden, besides salaries of £20 for the master and
£10 for an usher. There was also a salary of ;£5 " for
an English usher " left by will in 1713.
Joseph Hardy seems to have married about 1750 ;
the eldest of his children, whose baptisms I have
discovered at Sutton Valence, being born in October,
1751. But we have no clue to his wife's family or the
place of their marriage. We only know from the grant
of administration to her of her husband's estate on
his death that her name was Mary.f
In 1755 he took the degree of LL.B. at Cambridge,
and it appears from entries of his children's baptisms
in the parish registers that some time between 1759
* Hist. Kent, First Edition, Vol. II, p. 415.
t Cant. Prerog. Court, August 16, 1786.
132 Children of William Hardy of Park House
and 1 76 1 he added to his duties as a schoolmaster
those of curate of Sutton Valence, which were no
doubt identical with those supposed to be performed
by the vicar, and therefore included the duties be-
longing to the adjoining parish of East Sutton. The
vicar or his representative " preached alternately at
the two churches on Sunday, morning and afternoon."*
The holder of the benefice from 1759 to 1761 was
Samuel Venner, who may then have been too old for
service, for he died in 1764. He was succeeded by
Nicholas Broome, but from the evidence of the registers
it appears the curate still continued in office ; and
doubtless, as a tolerably consistent absentee, the new
vicar, who held the living for forty-one years, found
the school with its clerical headmaster a very con-
venient institution. For, according to Hasted, writing
about the year 1790, the parsonage houses both in
East Sutton and Sutton Valence had been for many
years in the possession of the Payne and Filmer
families respectively under leases from the Dean and
Chapter of Canterbury, who were the patrons.
In 1762 the schoolmaster was presented by the
Archbishop of Canterbury to the rectory of Headcorn,
a village about five miles south of Sutton Valence.
His signature is found in the registers of both churches,
but as the curate to whom a memorial is erected in
the church at Headcorn must ordinarily have done
the duty there, the rector's appearance can only have
been occasional.
In 1769 he was nominated by Sir Thomas Rider,
the lord of the manor, to the perpetual curacy of
Bilsington,t near Winchilsea, of the clear value,
* Hasted. t Lambeth Register.
Joseph Hardy and his Benefices 133
according to Hasted, of £30 ; and again he was pre-
sented by the Archbishop in 1772 to the vicarage of
Monkton* in the Isle of Thanet, which included the
chapels of Birchington and VVoodchurch. These
places are, of course, so far from Sutton Valence that
no one who resided there can be supposed to have
done any regular duty at any of them, and it is notice-
able that the parsonage at Monkton had for ages been
let for secular purposes by the Dean and Chapter as
lords of the manor, and was known by the ancient
name of the Aumbry (or Almonry) Farm.f
The case of this parson-schoolmaster is a striking
illustration of the way in which preferments were
dealt with in the days of pluralities and non-residence.
It was, of course, though economical, a very bad
system, and hable to scandalous abuses, but it did not
follow, as we have seen at Kirkburton — and it may
have been the same at Sutton Valence and Headcorn —
that because the vicar himself was an absentee the
parishioners were without a faithful and active pastor
according to the requirements of that day. At the
end of the eighteenth century considerable public
excitement was caused by some of the bishops taking
action to compel the beneficed clergy to reside, and
the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine for 1801 give
one some idea of how the system struck a contem-
porary. One correspondent argues that to compel the
beneficed clergy to " undertake the drudgery " of
parochial duty would be to " degrade the Church,"
because the upper classes would not then take orders ;
and, moreover, the curates employed by the vicars
* Lambeth Register. f Hasted, Vol. IV, p. 310.
134 Children of William Hardy of Park House
would lose their occupation and be turned adrift.*
To this it was rejoined that the curates themselves,
who were sometimes beneficed, took as many cures
as they could get hold of, and lived for the sake of
amusements and company in a market-town sometimes
a dozen miles from their benefices. f
The Rev. Joseph Hardy, as appears from a tablet on
the'south wall of Sutton Valence Church, died on August
5, 1786, aged sixty-three. He was buried in Lambe's,
the Founder's Chapel, which was on the south side of
the chancel ; but the tablet does not indicate that
spot, the church having been entirely rebuilt between
the years 1823 and 1828, though mainly on the old
plan. J The memorial to the schoolmaster seems to
have been erected on the occasion of the death on
October 16, 1823, of his daughter " Harriet, wife of
William Kingsley, Esquire, of Sittingbourne," who
himself died June 30, 1827, and is commemorated in
addition. It may be reasonably concluded that
notwithstanding his numerous sources of income the
Rev. Joseph Hardy left but little wealth behind him ;
for he died without a will, and only eleven days later
letters of administration of his effects were granted to
his widow, Mary. We shall find her still hving as late
as May, 1796.
§ 3. The Rev. Edward Hardy (1714-1796)
Edward Hardy, the eldest of Joseph's brethren,
took his degree of B.A. and deacon's orders in 1736
* Gent. Mag., 1801, p. S97.
t Ibid., p. io8g.
J See An Account of the Church, by C. F. Angell, f.s.a., a past-
master of the Clothworkers' Company (1874).
Edward Hardy ; Sevenoaks School 135
and priest's orders in 1741.* In 1740 he married
Miss Esther Curteis, daughter of the Rev. Thomas
Curteis of Sevenoaks, and he was presented to the
rectory of Halstead, about five miles from Sevenoaks,
in 1771.*
It appears from the second edition of Hasted's
History of Kent, Vol. Ill (1797), p. 19, that William
Hardy, undoubtedly an error for Edward Hardy, f
who was Rector of Halstead, was also " master of the
school at Sevenoke " ; but from various books of
account, etc., belonging to the governors of that school,
it is clear that he was never headmaster, and there is
no name given in the books of any assistant-master.
It is amusing to observe that the salary paid from
1719 to the headmaster included provision for an
usher or assistant-master. The salary down to 1771,
when Henry Whitfield, a relative by marriage of the
Curteis family, { was appointed, was only £50, but
\vithin ten years after that £25 was added as "a
contribution towards the usher's place." Yet in 1774
a special resolution was passed by the governors that
Mr. Whitfield should provide an under-master " to
encourage the school." We can scarcely suppose
there was any under-master before this, and this it
was, doubtless, which led to Edward Hardy being
appointed to the post. We should perhaps not be far
wrong in concluding that the arrangement between
the master and his assistant was something of the
same nature as that between the absentee incum-
bent and his curate. Nor would this supposition be
* Lambeth Register.
] It is repeated in his account of Sevenoaks. See below.
X Berry's County Genealogies — Kent.
136 Children of William Hardy of Park House
altogether inconsistent with Hasted's statement in his
first edition (1778), that the school was then flourishing
" under the Rev. Henry Whitfield." His not mention-
ing Edward Hardy might be due to his appointment
not having come to the author's knowledge when he
went to press.
The fact that Edward Hardy was brother-in-law of
Dr. Thomas Curteis, who had succeeded his father
as Rector of Sevenoaks, is quite sufficient to account
for his connection with the school, even if it was his
ability as a teacher which caused it to flourish for the
remaining twenty years of his life. Dr. Curteis was a
governor, as was also the Duke of Dorset, to whom
Dr. Curteis was private chaplain at Knowle, the ducal
residence in the immediate neighbourhood. The
family of Curteis is amongst those well known in the
Weald of Kent, and their pedigrees and connections
are displayed in Berry's County Genealogies. The date
of Edward Hardy's marriage appears from a reference
in his will to his wife's marriage settlement, which
comprised a sum of £2000, but it seems she became
entitled sooner or later to something like double that
amount at the least, as on her death her personal
estate was sworn at " under £5000," and this was
probably in addition to the settlement.
It does not appear how Edward Hardy became
acquainted with this lady. Her father, besides being
patron, rector, and vicar of the living of Sevenoaks,
had held for some thirty years the uncommonly rich
benefice of Wrotham, which was in the gift of the
Archbishop, and is valued by Hasted at £1000 a year.
He died in 1747, two years before his daughter's
marriage, and was succeeded by his son. The latter
Edward Hardy : The Curteis Family 137
was of Jesus College, but took his degree of B.A. in
1727, and was therefore some years senior to Edward
Hardy, who was admitted at Christ's in 1733, but the
acquaintance may nevertheless have arisen through
some friendship at Cambridge.
From the time of his taking orders till he obtained
the rectory of Halstead we have no record of uncle
Edward's career. He was perhaps a hard-working
curate in the north ; but I imagine it equally probable
that he was at Sevenoaks, though whether during
that period he performed there any clerical duties,
hard-working or otherwise, is an open question. The
registers of 1736 and some years later contain no
traces of a curate, and the earliest record they contain
of any function performed by him is a marriage on
April 5, 1775, where he is described as Rector of
Halstead. His acceptance of the benefice of that place
would rather seem in the nature of such things to be a
reason for his living elsewhere, especially having regard
to Hasted's account in 1778 of " the present state of
Halstead," which consists of the following brief but
expressive sentences : " The village of Halstead has
nothing worth notice in it. This parish lies upon the
chalk hills, and the lands of it are much covered with
flints." The rector would doubtless find it preferable
to let the parsonage house to a farmer and reside in
the nearest market-town, where " company and
amusements " would not be entirely lacking. Both
in the vdll of his cousin John dated in 1776 and in his
own in 1796 he is simply described as of Sevenoaks.
In performing the marriage there in April, 1775, he
was probably only acting on account of the illness of
his brother-in-law, the rector, who died very soon
138 Children of William Hardy of Park House
after. On March 30, 1775, Edward Hardy was instituted
as his successor.* This, however, was only in the
capacity of a family warming-pan. The patronage was
vested in David Papillon, the son-in-law and trustee
of the late rector, whose son Thomas Sackville Curteis
was in due course presented in 1777 on Hardy's
resignation.!
The intimate connection of Edward Hardy with the
Curteis family seems to account to a considerable
extent for the patronage obtained, not only by himself,
but by his brother Joseph. Dr. Curteis, in addition
to his family living at Sevenoaks, the chaplaincy at
Knole, and two or three other posts, held a canonry
at Canterbury from 1755,$ and the Hardys' livings of
Headcorn, Monkton, and Halstead were all in the gift
of the Archbishop. In the same way we may readily
account for Dr. Curteis obtaining for himself from the
Dean and Chapter in 1756 the rectory of St. Dionis,
Backchurch, in the City of London. J This church,
which was pulled down in 1877, stood in the corner
between Lime Street and Fenchurch Street, and
consequently was very near the abode of Edward
Hardy's brothers in Leadenhall Street. It would not
have been surprising to find that he was at an early
date curate of St. Dionis, but that this was not the
case is clear from the names of the curates regularly
entered in the parish registers. The rector's signature,
it need scarcely be mentioned, is conspicuous by its
absence.
Edward Hardy died in 1797, § and his will, dated
May 20, 1796, was proved on February 16, 1797, by
* Lambeth Register. f Hasted.
X Lambeth Register. \ Hasted.
Edward Hardy s Will 1 39
his nephew Robert Cumming.* After referring to
his wife's marriage settlement he gives his own property
to his own relations. Besides Robert Gumming he
names his brothers John and Thomas, the widows of
his brothers Joseph and William, his nieces Isabella,
Maria, and Mrs. Kingsley, and his nephew George,
who, as will be seen below, was the youngest son of his
brother Joseph. There is no mention of Henry Hardy
or of his nephew Thomas Flasby Hardy. His widow,
who was appointed executrix, did not join in proving
the will. She survived her husband three years, and
it is evidence that she left no issue that administration
of her estate was granted to her nephew, the Rev.
Thomas Sackville Curteis, as one of her next of kin.f
* Canterbury Prerog. Court.
\ Cant. Prerog. Court, April ii, 1799.
CHAPTER IX
SIXTH GENERATION, CONTINUED
Division 2. Children of Thomas Hardy of Mir field
(1719-1779)
THOMAS HARDY, the Vicar of Mirfield, seems
to have had only two children, whose baptisms
are both recorded in the Mirfield parish register, as
follows :
William, July 4, 1719 ; and
John, February 25, 1722-3.
From the college books we find William, son of the
Rev. Mr. Hardy, born at Mirfield, admitted at Christ's,
Cambridge, May 26, 1738. Like his cousin Edward,
he was educated at Kirkby Lonsdale school under Mr.
Noble.* He was also a sizar, but it does not appear
that he was an exhibitioner. He took his degrees
of B.A. in 1741 and M.A. in 1745. He was probably
identical with the Rev. William Hardy, m.a., who,
according to the Archbishop's register, was ordained
deacon on March 14, 1741, and priest September 23,
1744, and who was instituted to the rectory of Eastwell,
near Wye, in Kent, on the presentation of the Earl of
Winchilsea on July 6, 1745. As there is no mention of
him in the will of his brother John dated October 21,
* " In schola de Kirkby Lonsdale sub M"». Noble." In the case
of Edward the words are simply " apud Kirkby Lonsdale," etc.
140
John Hardy of Bridge Place 141
1776, it is probable he was then dead and had left no
issue. If we are right in identifying him with the
Rector of Eastwell, it will be noticed that his presenta-
tion to that living precedes the appointment of his
cousin Joseph at Sutton Valence, and therefore marks
the earliest arrival of his generation in Kent. But
this throws no light on the problem of what brought
them all there.
Of the second son of the Vicar of Mirfield, who also
settled in Kent, and was perhaps after all the pioneer,
we have no record between his baptism and his will.
The will is an important clue, showing clearly the
connection between the families of the three brothers —
William of Park House, Thomas of Mirfield, and John
of Kirkburton. The testator describes himself as of
Bridge Place, near Canterbury. According to Hasted
this was the manor-house of the manor of Bridge,
which was purchased by John Taylor of Bifrons in
1704. He pulled down all but one wing previous to
his death in 1729. This wing has survived to modern
times in the shape of a large square house grown over
with ivy and standing near the church. In the floor
of the church a slab shows the place of burial of
" John Hardy of Bridge Place, Esquire," in 1779.
Both Bridge Place and Bifrons were, according to
Hasted, the property of the grandson of John Taylor
as late as 1790, so that we may conclude that John
Hardy was either a leaseholder or the occupier of the
place under a marriage settlement, his wife being
perhaps the aforesaid John Taylor's daughter.
It appears from John Hardy's will, which is dated
October 21, 1776, that he had only one child, a
daughter named Frances Catherina, then a minor and
142 Children of Thomas Hardy of Mirfield
unmarried, and that the name of his wife, who proved
the will in the Canterbury Prerogative Court on
September 10, 1779, was Anne. In default of his
daughter leaving issue he gives his property ultimately
to his cousins, " Joseph Hardy of Town Sutton, clerk,
Edward Hardy of Sevenoaks, clerk, John and Thomas
Hardy of Bishopsgate, hardwaremen, EHzabeth Gum-
ming of Kirkby Lonsdale, widow, and Thomas Hardy
of Kirkburton, Yorkshire, and his two sisters."
Whether or not Frances Catherina married and had
issue we are not able to state. We can, however, aver
that no tradition of any share of her fortune having
passed to her cousin Joseph or his representatives has
yet reached those of his descendants who are at present
in being.
Our record of the last-named " Thomas and his two
sisters," who would come next in the series of the
sixth generation, has already been given with our
account of their father. Of Robert, the son of Eliza-
beth Cumming of Kirkby Lonsdale, and of the de-
scendants of John and Thomas Hardy of Bishopsgate,
we have also dealt in anticipation. We come therefore
at last to ourselves, the descendants of their brother
Joseph.
CHAPTER X
SEVENTH GENERATION
Children of Joseph Hardy of Sutton Valence
THE parish register at Sutton Valence gives the
following hst with dates both of birth and
baptism of the schoolmaster's children :
John, born 22, bap. 30 October, 1751.
Thomas, b. 21 March, bap. 16 April, 1753.
Matilda Elizabeth, b. 28 July, bap. 9 August, 1755
(d. 15, buried 20 April, 1765).
Anna Christiana, b. 26 August, bap. 13 September,
1756.
Hariot, b. 23 March, bap. 20 April, 1759.
William, b. 16 March, bap. 4 May, 1761.
Joseph, b. 13 February, bap. 9 March, 1764.
George, b. 16 November, bap. 16 December, 1766.
Of these John, Thomas, and William must have died
young, as Joseph their younger brother is described
as the eldest son in the entry of his admission at
Pembroke College, Cambridge, on May 30, 1782.
Of Anna Christiana I have no trace beyond her
baptism. She is not mentioned in her uncle Edward's
will dated May 20, 1796. In fact, as he only mentions
Hariot (Mrs. Kingsley) and George, it may be con-
cluded that none of the others were then living. Of
Joseph it is said, according to a rehable tradition, that
M3
144 Children of Joseph Hardy
he was chaplain at Knole to the Duke of Dorset,
which, from what we know of his family connections,
seems quite probable, and that he died unmarried in
early life.
Of George's marriage I have not been able to find
any direct evidence. The date July 25, 1788, and the
name of his wife Mary I have found at the foot of a
list of his children's birthdays written on the upper
part of a half-sheet of foolscap which was formerly
in the possession of his youngest daughter Hannah.
The marriage is registered neither at Sutton Valence
nor at Shoreditch, where the first-born was christened,
nor at St. Peter's, Cornhill. The bridegroom being in
his twenty-second year, we may conjecture that it
was a runaway match. Of the bride all we can say is
that her age was all but twenty-three,* and that her
surname of Dalton is decidedly suggestive of the North
Country. It occurs as a place-name in the Parlia-
mentary Gazetteer about a dozen times — always in
Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, or Lancashire.
There is a manor of Dalton in Lancashire immediately
adjoining the Westmorland boundary.
George Hardy's coming to London can scarcely
have been altogether unconnected with the residence
of his uncles in Leadenhall Street, and it is possible
that he was for a time in their employ. But it seems
more probable that he went into the Excise Office on
his first arrival, which may well have been before he
married, or at least as early as 1790, as that is the last
year in which the name of David Papillon appears
in the annual list of the Excise Commissioners. He
* Her birthday, July 27, 1765, is added to the list of her
children's with her surname.
George Hardy of the Excise Office 145
it was, no doubt, who introduced George Hardy into
the office. He had been on the Board since 1756, and
senior commissioner since 178 1, and , another David
Papillon had been a commissioner many years before
him.* He was a sort of uncle-in-law to George, having
married a Miss Curteis of Sevenoaks, whose sister was
the wife of the Rev. Edward Hardy.
George's occupation is not mentioned in the earher
registers of his children's baptisms, but in 1795 he is
described at Bethnal Green as a gentleman, and in
1796 as a clerk. The first express mention we have
of his being a clerk in the Excise Office is on April 26,
1800, the record of his son John's presentation at
Christ's Hospital by Alderman Sir WiUiam Herne.f
In the Royal Calendar and Court Directory for 1818
he appears amongst the officials under " Excise
Office : Bills of Exchange Department." In 1824 he
is moved up to " General Accountants : Papers, etc.,"
where he remains till 1829. From 1829 to 1833 he
appears as " George Hardy, Esquire," being moved up
in 1832, the year of his death, to " Debentures, etc."
Of the Government clerk who thus died in harness at
the age of sixty-six tradition tells us that, if he had
been content not to hold his head quite so high, he
might himself have risen higher and been better endowed
with the rewards which this world can bestow. We
may gather that he had inherited something of that
modest yet self-sufficient pride which was characteristic
of his statesmen ancestors. Some of his colleagues,
like the Kemps, with whom he became allied by mar-
* See the Court and City Register (Rider's Merlin) from 1744.
t He was elected for Castle Baynard ward in 1796, and was
sheriff before 1800 {Court and City Register).
L
146 Children of Joseph Hardy
riage, may have had their kin in the ranks of the
service for a generation or more, but it was not every-
body in the office whose uncle was brother-in-law
to the senior commissioner, whose father was a parson
with three or four livings in the gift of an archbishop,
or whose elder brother was chaplain to a duke. Proud
though he might be of these connections, he would
not be disposed to boast of them, and still less to
trade upon them. Cadging for promotion might suit
others, but for him honourable conduct and steady
attention to business ought to be enough to secure his
deserts. If these were his sentiments it need not
surprise us that after a long and severe struggle to
maintain his rapidly growing family in early life his
rise in officialdom should be slow, especially in the
atmosphere which prevailed in the days of the Regency,
and that he should be able to leave little or nothing
for the support of his widow, notwithstanding nearly
half a century of quill-driving and arithmetic in
Government employ. Probably she had a small
pension. She survived her husband eleven years,
dying in the house of her son John in Canonbury
Square on January 21, 1843. She is remembered by
more than one of her grandchildren as sweet and
charming, and on the grandchildren of her grand-
children her portrait, painted in her old age in a
close-fitting mob-cap, still looks down with a quiet
smile.
CHAPTER XI
EIGHTH GENERATION
§ I. George Hardy and his Children (1789-1892)
FROM the entries of the baptisms of George
Hardy's numerous children something may be
learnt of his early life and circumstances, and inci-
dentally some light may be thrown upon the topo-
graphy of the veritable suburbs of London City at
the end of the eighteenth century, when the state of
things was very different from anything the present
generation has known. It should perhaps be premised
that the Excise Office was then in Broad Street, and
that it was necessary for a clerk, who had to be on
his stool at an early hour, to have his dwelling-place
within an easy walk of that spot. The era of the London
omnibus dates only from 1829.
The following is a list of the children of George and
Mary Hardy as entered in the registers of their bap-
tisms, the first three being at St. Leonard's, Shore-
ditch, and the rest at St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green :
George
bom May 25, bap. June 21, 1789
William
„ July 9 „ Aug. 4,1790
John
,, May 9* ,, June 3, 1792
* This date is the only one which does not agree with the hst
referred to above, where it is given as May 7. In the presentation
book at Christ's Hospital it is given as May; 9.
147
1 48 George Hardy and his Children
Harlot bom Dec. 2, '93,
bap. Jan. 5, 1794.
Harriot
July 15
„ Aug. 26, 1795.
George Frederick ,,
Aug. 9
„ Sep. 4, 1796.
Harriet
Oct. 15
Nov. II, 1798.
Mary Ann
Mar. 19
April 19, 1801.
Eliza \
Hannah Maria ] "
Mar. 9
May 4, 1804.
Lewis Adam
Mar. 5
„ April 3, 1808.
In the first entry the parents' address is given as
" the Curtain," and in the second as " Holywell
Mount." No such addresses now exist, and some little
investigation of the ancient state of Shoreditch is
necessary to find them. If the two were not identical,
they were both, at any rate, in or very near to what
is now Curtain Road, a thoroughfare far from inviting
to a newly married couple in search of a genteel though
modest home. In a district mainly interested in the
manufacture of household furniture, it runs north and
south on the west side of, and parallel to, the high road
called Shoreditch ; which, as in the days of John
Gilpin, connects Bishopsgate Street, through Norton
Folgate, with Kingsland, Edmonton, and Ware.
Curtain Road is connected with Shoreditch by Wor-
ship Street at its south end, about the middle by
Holywell Lane, and at its north end by the piece of the
Old Street Road between the " London Apprentice "
and St. Leonard's Church.
In the maps by R. Blome in Strype's editions of
Stow's Survey of London (1720 and 1755) " the Cur-
tain " is shown as a wide roadway or strip of open space
corresponding with that part of Curtain Road which
now runs from Worship Street (then Hog Lane) as far
Old Shoreditch 149
only as Holywell Lane. The name of the Curtain,
which it will be remembered was borne by one of the
theatres contemporary with Shakespeare's first arrival
in London,* was derived from the fortification, a wall
between two bastions, which evidently bounded the
east side of this open space. f This fortification would
not be complete without a ditch, and this was pro-
vided along the opposite side of the strip by a water-
course, which reached it from the north-west, turning
south at a point a short distance further north than
the end of Holywell Lane. This is all made plain by
an elaborate map of the parish of Shoreditch by
Chassereau dated 1745. J This also shows, by shading,
what was evidently the original " Holywell Mount " —
a mound nearly opposite the end of Holywell Lane,
owned separately from the adjoining property. It
was bounded on the north and east by the aforesaid
watercourse, which came along " Willow Walk " (the
site of the present Great Eastern Street) from a festive
watering-place in Old Street known as the Baths of
St. Agnes Clear, and on the south-east by a foot-
path, which crossed the watercourse by a bridge
and ran through the fields in a south-west direction
along what is now Scrutton Street and Holywell
Row.
Chassereau also shows a sort of road or way called
" Ditchside " continuing the " Curtain " a short dis-
tance further north, that is, to the point where the
ditch turns off round the Mount. In 1756 an Act of
* Stow's Survey of London ; Arber's Introduction to Gosson's
School of Abuse, p. 8.
t Cunningham's London Past and Present, ed. Wheatley.
X A copy is in the Grace Collection (Britiih Museum), portfolio
XVI, No. 4, and there is another at St. Leonard's Church.
1 50 George Hardy and his Children
Parliament* was passed for improving the road
" through Worship Street and the Curtain to the
Ditchside next Holywell Mount," and making a new
road thence through garden ground to the London
Apprentice. It was clearly under this Act that Cur-
tain Road came into existence, but we j:annot be
certain how long after 1756 the work was completed
or when new houses were built along it.
In Ellis's History of Shoreditch and Norton Folgate
(1798) he says that Holywell Mount, covering three
acres, was levelled about the year 1787, and that
streets had since been built on the site.f and Hor-
wood's Map of London in 1799 shows these streets and
Curtain Road laid out as they are to-day. All we can
say therefore for certain is that the conversion of the
Curtain and Ditchside into Curtain Road and the
covering of the Mount with houses took place at some
time between 1787 and 1798 — possibly to some extent
before, but probably almost entirely after May 25,
1789, the day of the appearance of Mrs. George Hardy's
first-born.
The only houses now existing in Curtain Road
which can have been standing anything like a hundred
years are the rather picturesque block on the east side
at the south end — in fact, on what was originally
" the Curtain." It seems probable that these were
built when the improvements were at an early stage,
and George Hardy may therefore have lived there in
1789. " Holywell Mount " might be a vague way of
referring to one of the newly built streets on that site ;
but more probably, as it seems to me, it was another
* 29 Geo. II, cap. 44.
f p. 207. Chassereau gives the area as 3 a. 2 r. 13 p.
The Curtain and Holywell Mount 1 5 1
name for the short continuation of the Curtain at the
side of the Mount, which had formerly been called
Ditchside. The old maps show buildings adjoining
this spot at an early date on ground which formed
the " back side " of the ancient Holywell Priory, and
the course of the improvements would barely have
reached this point in^iygo. Indeed it might be sup-
posed that the " Curtain " also was only a euphemism
for Ditchside, and that both addresses refer to the one
abode opposite the Mount. There is, however, an odd
little coincidence which inclines'one to the old buildings
as the earher home of the youthful couple. The blind
alley which runs along the south side of these buildings
bears the name of Hearn Street. May it not be that
Alderman Heme, who, as already mentioned, gave
them a presentation for their boy at Christ's Hospital
in 1800, was the owner of these buildings, and therefore
George Hardy's landlord in 1789 ?
It is not surprising, considering the alterations which
must necessarily have been in progress in Curtain Road
in 1789 and later, that our ancestor and his family
did not remain there long. The next entry in the
register gives their abode in June, 1792, as " Union
Street." There is no Union Street actually in Shore-
ditch parish, but that recognised by the parish clerk
as belonging to it runs east from Bishopsgate Street
without* to Crispin Street, and has since with its
continuation, Paternoster Row, been renamed Brush-
field Street. It was doubtless called Union Street
• Bishopsgate Streets Within and Without are now offi ially
renamed " Bishopsgate " : a rather unfortunate change, tending to
suggest that the original " Gate " was a street, as it might well
have been, according to Northern or Midland usage, whereas it was
an opening in the City wall.
152 George Hardy and his Children
because it united the City with Spitalfields, at the
same time passing through a small area which was
outside both, known as the Liberty of the Old Artillery
Ground. The name of this area lying immediately
outside the City speaks for itself. As a practising
ground for the gunners from the Tower it did not want
a parish church, and after it was superseded by the
New Artillery Ground near Bunhill Fields and built
upon, it still remained extra-parochial. Consequently
the inhabitants had to go for christenings, marriages,
and burials to such neighbouring church as they chose.
It was therefore natural that the third child of
George Hardy, if born in this Liberty, should be
christened at the same church as the two elder ones.
There is nothing in the register to guide us to any
particular house in Union Street, but the part within
the Liberty is marked off by the backs of the houses
in two streets which cross it, Duke Street and Gun
Street. The general appearance of the little houses,
now nearly all made into shops and some rebuilt, is
squalid and depressing, but of course they have greatly
deteriorated with age and the increasing closeness of
their surroundings. The cross streets do not seem to
have been built till after 1799, as they are not shown
on Horwood's map of that date.
The entries in the register at Bethnal Green give us
no information as to residence, and our next evidence
on that point is the record of John Hardy's admission
to Christ's Hospital on April 26, 1800. His father is
there described as a clerk in the Excise Office, residing
at 2 George Street, Bethnal Green. Of George Street
only a small part remains, and is now called Code
Street. It runs north from Buxton Street (formerly
Union Street and George Street 153
Spicer Street) to the East London Railway close to
Shoreditch Station. In 1800, as appears from Hor-
wood's map, it extended north across the site of the
railway to St. John Street, and south across the site
of the present extension of Truman, Hanbury, and
Buxton's brewery. No. 2 therefore has certainly
disappeared. Judging from what has the misfortune
to remain of it, George Street at its best consisted of
very humble abodes, but in 1800 it was quite on the
outskirts of the town. Spicer Street in two or three
minutes led from it to a large area of garden ground
at the back of the houses in Mile End. Beyond St.
Matthew's Church to the north and east was the open
country, and even on the west side of the church were
fields only just being laid out as new streets.
The next place of abode of which we have any
knowledge was Hoxton Square, and of this only the
evidence of tradition, which, however, seems to have
been accurately preserved. It seems tolerably certain
that the house was that now numbered 19 on the
north side. It has been much altered if not rebuilt,
and is occupied as a clergy-house in connection with
the chapel of St. Monica which adjoins it. The square
is only a stone's-throw from the London Apprentice,
the corner where Curtain Road joins Old Street. It
is consequently a rather dismal spot, nearly every
house having been knocked, so to speak, into a furni-
ture factory. Some of the houses on the south side,
which have been very Uttle altered, are very curious,
and must be something like two hundred years old,
but the rest have been built much later. The square
was, however, laid out certainly as early as 1720,
according to Strype, when the gardens behind the
154 George Hardy and his Childreji
houses on the east side joined the httle wayside
hamlet of Hoxton, otherwise Hogge's Town. The old
houses in the narrow High Street have still many
features reminiscent of those distant days, which
seem easier to reahse than those of the early nineteenth
century. Of that time the garden is probably the
least-altered feature which now remains in the square.
As to the time when George Hardy lived there
tradition does not speak definitely, but as the square
is in Shoreditch parish, it may be presumed that he
did not move thither till after March, 1808, when his
youngest child was christened at Bethnal Green.
On the other hand, there is reason to suppose it did not
continue long after 1812. In that year the marriage took
place between his eldest son William, then aged about
twenty-two, and the daughter of one of his colleagues at
the Excise Office, Thomas Kemp,* who was his neigh-
bour in Hoxton Square ; and it is said that out of this
event arose differences between the two families
which led the Hardys to move away.
It is not said whither they moved, but there is a
tradition that for a considerable time their place of
abode was " Norton Folgate." What is generally
known as Norton Folgate to-day is the short length
of the aforesaid ancient highway to Edmonton which
connects the north end of Bishopsgate Street Without
with the south end of " Shoreditch." This short
thoroughfare — but at its south end only the eastern
side of it — might be more accurately called that part
of the high street which is in the Liberty of Norton
Folgate, the latter being a small area at the south-
* His name appears amongst the clerks there in the Royal
Calendar as early as 1795.
OLU HOUSKS IN SPITTAL SQUARE, NOKTON KClAiATE
Hoxton Sqtiare and Norton Folgate 155
eastern corner of Shoreditch parish wedged in between
the City, the Old Artillery Ground Liberty, and
Spitalfields. A small part of it lies on the west side
of the high street and adjoins the south side of Worship
Street, but the main part is on the east, consisting of
Spittal Square, White Lion Street, and two or three
streets further north. Spittal Square is a quiet nook
reached only by narrow streets, and consequently
scarcely used at all by wheeled traffic. It contains
two or three blocks of alluring old Georgian houses,
of the style of that at Sutton Valence in which George
Hardy was born ; and they suggest that a hundred
years ago Norton Folgate must have been quite a
dignified place of residence. Like the Liberty of the
Old Artillery Ground, it was extra-parochial, and
Ellis* quotes " the ancients " as saying to that effect
that they married and buried where they pleased.
It is therefore not inconsistent with the family
having lived here in 1820 that on December 7 of that
year John Hardy, the second son, is described in the
register of his marriage at St. John's, Hackney, as of
St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green, that being very
probably where he would worship and have his banns
pubhshed if Norton Folgate was his home, as it had
certainly been his father's place of worship from 1793
to 1808.
Another coincidence may be mentioned in con-
firmation of the tradition of a residence in Norton
Folgate. At St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, there is an
entry that WilHam and Charlotte Read of Norton
Folgate had their daughter Charlotte baptised there
on May 23, 1790. It may well be conjectured that
* Hist. Shoreditch and Norton Folgate (1798), p. 305.
156 George Hardy and his Children
this William was identical with the father of Mary
Read, the bride of John Hardy, whose marriage has
just been mentioned, and that the two famiHes were
near neighbours before the Reads moved to the then
salubrious suburb of Hackney, where they were living
in 1820. For we have it from the bridegroom himself
that one of the features of his courtship, like that of
Pyramus and Thisbe, was a garden wall — in other
words, it is clear that the gardens of the lovers' houses
adjoined each other. This proximity and the fact
that Mary Read had an uncle in the Excise Office
easily account for an intimacy between the two
families.*
From Norton Folgate and Bethnal Green it is a
far cry to the banks of Lune, and it may seem odd
that we should turn to the pages of the Lonsdale
Magazine for a description of the neighbourhood
immediately adjoining the City Liberty at the time of
our ancestor's residence there. There is, however, an
article in that periodical for the year i82i,t under the
heading of " Spitalfields," apparently attributable to
the Rev. William Carus Wilson, who was interesting
himself in relieving the appaUing poverty of that
suburban parish. To this object it appears he had
appropriated the " superfluous labour " of the Tunstal
School for Training Girls for Service. This school was
part of the institution founded by him which included
the Cowan Bridge School for Daughters of the Clergy,
where everyone familiar with the history of the Bronte
* We do not know what was William Read's own business. He
came from Deal, in which neighbourhood his family had been settled
for some generations.
t Vol. II, p. 228.
Lonsdale and Spitalfields 157
family — and who is not ? — vnll remember that Char-
lotte and her sisters spent some unhappy years as
pupils.
The cottages in which the daughters of the clergy
were then housed still exist on the banks of the Leek
Beck, and from the side windows of the end cottage
you look across the road to a field gate. Through this
the carriage drive leads to Park House, which had
been the habitation of WiUiam Hardy, George Hardy's
grandfather, almost exactly a hundred years before
the time with which we are now concerned. The
editor of the magazine which was pubhshed at Kirkby
Lonsdale was one John Briggs, who may have boasted
a cousinship many times removed with the Rev. John
Briggs, the vicar, who also a hundred years ago had
befriended William Hardy's two brothers. Is it not
an inviting hypothesis that George Hardy was the
link, or one of the links, that brought the charity
of Carus Wilson and the good people of Lonsdale
into connection with Spitalfields ? A large part of the
article consists of a quotation from the speech of Mr.
T. F. Buxton, m.p., at a Mansion House meeting of the
Benevolent Society in 1816, in which the misery of
that parish, rendered all the more acute from its being
one huge self-contained area of poor wage-earners in
the closest contiguity with a centre of rapidly in-
creasing wealth, is very impressively described. As
a result of this meeting some £43,000 was subscribed
for the relief of the parish, and in the distribution of
this fund the principal agent named is the Rev. Josiah
Pratt, the minister of Wheler Chapel in Spittal Square,
Norton Folgate.
As we have now reached a period within the know-
158 George Hardy and his Children
ledge of the generations still living, we may deal very
shortly with remaining facts as to generation No. 8.
Of the eleven children enumerated above five died
young. In the record at Christ's Hospital of John
Hardy's admission it is stated that he then had only
four children, and indeed it is obvious that the first
George must have died before the second was christened
in 1796, and the first and second Harriets before the
third was christened in 1798.
William, as already stated, married in 1812 Ehza-
beth, daughter of Thomas Kemp. By her he had a
numerous family.
John married first Mary, daughter of William Read,
and secondly Ann, daughter of Samuel Whitaker, by
both of whom he had issue. He died in his ninety-first
year, which is the longest recorded life in our genealogy,
that of his cousin Rebecca Bingley (born Hardy) of
Kirkburton excepted. The average age recorded in
the male line to this point is a fraction under
seventy.
George Frederick married first Sarah Patten, and
secondly Fanny Groom, leaving issue by his first
marriage two daughters only.
Harriet married Thomas Charlesworth, by whom she
had many children.*
Of Mary and Ehza nothing but their baptisms is
known to us, and they no doubt died in childhood.
* Whether it be a mere coincidence I know not, but it is worth
noting that records of a family of Charlesworths are found century
after century in the parish registers of Kirkburton, where we have
already traced a branch of the Hardys. The Charlesworths appear
so numerously in the registers from 1540 to 1571 that they must
have been flourishing in the neighbourhood many generations
earlier.
Hannali Maria : Chrissy Kingsley 159
Hannah Maria, who survived all her brothers and
sisters, died unmarried in 1892.
Lewis Adam married and had one daughter.
§ 2. Stray Cousins
There appears in the list of oflicials at the Excise
Office amongst the " accountants for London Brewery,"
from 1823 to 1828, one Henry J. Hardy. This may
have been a son of the " Henry, son of Thomas Hardy,"
who was baptised at St. Peter's, Cornhill, on December
18, 1757, and who may have been a son of Thomas
Hardy of Leadenhall Street, and therefore first cousin
to George. Henry himself does not appear in the
published list of the Excise Officials, but it may well
be supposed that he was there without attaining to
the upper ranks, or that his son was got into the office
in consequence of his relationship with George.
Mrs. Kingsley, the sister of George Hardy, was said
by her nephew John to have had a daughter, whom
he used to recall as his charming cousin, Chrissy, and a
tradition, which does not furnish the name of her
husband, relates that she had three daughters, Mrs.
Davenport, Mrs. Rokeby, and Mrs. Green. The name
df Chrissy, doubtless taken from her aunt Anna Chris-
tiana, also directs us again to St. Peter's ; where was
buried in 1771 the wife of John Hardy of Leadenhall
Street, who brought the name of Christian into the
family.
APPENDIX I
POOR HOUSEHOLDERS OF BARBON NAMED IN THE WILL
OF AGNES HARDY, MAY 28, 1605
John Becke,
Ric. Kendale,
John Gibson,
Geffery Hardye,
Anthony Hardj^e,
Wytton wife,
Ric. Ustonson wife,
John Wilson,
Edward Buskell wife,
and James
Robert Crosby,
Ric. Kendale wife,
James Richardson wife,
Nicholas Davye,
Anthony Bayliffe,
Roland Whitehead,
George Dickonson,
Robert Gibson,
William Wilson,
Fawcett.
160
APPENDIX II
THE HEARTH-TAX RETURNS OF 167O FOR MIDDLETON,
BARBON, AND CASTERTON
Name
Hearths
Name Hei
xrths
MiDDLETON
John Riding
2
Mr. Thos. Bainbrig
g • I
Chr. Walker
I
Widd. Baylitfe .
Tho. Whittington .
I
Symond Pierson .
John Thornbecke .
I
John Dent .
Robt. Atkinson
I
Hy. Holme .
Miles Walker
I
Mr. Tho. Ward .
John Riding
2
George Spencer
John Bayliffe
2
VVm. Bainbrigg
John Bayliffe
I
James Harrison
Thos. Baines et Mater
2
Joseph Bayhffe
John Wilson
I
Wm. Richardson
Widd. Moore
5
Richard Bouskell
James Wilson
2
John Thombecke
John Moore
. 2
Wm. Addison
Richd. Goseling .
. 2
James Moore
John Midi ton, Esqre.
7
John Bainbrigg
Chr. Thornbecke .
. I
Mr. Moore .
George Ward
. 2
John Ward .
John Thornbecke .
. I
John Harhng
Antho. Goseling .
. 2
Wm. Smarthwaite
Edw. Goseling
. 2
Mr. Bainbrigg
Chr. Bland .
. I
Philhp Walker
James Hebblethwaite
• 4
James Bouskell
. 2
Tho. Otway
. 2
Robt. Fawcett
. I
John Hebblethwaite
I
161
l62
The Hearth- Tax Returns
Najne Hearths
Name Hearths
Wm. Goselin
I
Richd. Hodghson .
2
James Goselin
I
Wm. Adison
I
Robt. Birkett
I
Richd. Garnett
I
Widd. Garden
I
Tho. Gibbonson .
3
James Ruecroft .
2
John Atkinson
2
Widd. Nelson
I
Robt. Moore
I
Nich. Otway
2
John Fowler
I
Nich, Otway
I
Robt. Holme
2
Robt. Hodghson .
3
Chr. Holme
2
James Baines
I
Tho. Fawcett
I
Rodger Dawson .
I
John Becke
I
Tho. Houghton .
I
Rich. Shuttleworth,
Edward Hading .
I
Esqre.
, 2
Robt. Jackson
I
Barbon
Edmond Garnett .
I
Robt. Bayliffe
2
Edmond Garnett .
2
Robt. Hardye
2
John Bainbrigg .
2
Jerimy Baines
I
Edmond Hardye .
I
Caste RTON
Sam. Otlay .
2
Tho. Fawcett
I
Miles Garnett
I
John Foxcroft
2
Edmond Garnett .
I
Geo. Woodhouse .
I
Robt. Whitehead .
I
Bryan Manzer
> 3
Tho. Holme
2
Robt. Denton
I
Wm. Garnett
I
Rebecca Witton .
. 2
John Garnett
4
Tho. Parker
• 3
Tho. Garnett
I
Wm. Garnett
. I
Tho. Dent .
I
Wm. Hinde
. 2
John Wilson
I
Robt. Garnett
I
Tho. Fawcett
I
Edmond Witton .
I
James Waidson .
2
John Moore
I
Edward Garnett .
. 2
Wm. Dodghson .
I
Richard Garnett .
2
Joseph Moore
I
Samuel Gibson
I
Chr. Witton
2
James Richardson
I
Richd. Turner
I
Modern Populations
163
Name
Hearths
Name Hearths
Chr. Hading
. I
Wm. Midlton
I
\Vm. Hardy
I
Edniond Dodghson
I
Chr. Jackson
. 2
John Smith
I
Edm. Hailing
. I
Franc. Styth
2
Edw. Harling
. I
Tho. Fawcett
I
VVidd. Baylifte
. 2
Widd. Garnett
I
Hy. Johnson
2 new built
Tho. Hinde
I
Widd. Jackson
. I
Tho. Witton
I
Edw. Bland
. I
From the repetition of some of the names in the above
and other lists it seems probable that, in spite of the
statutory directions to the contrary, the owner was some-
times entered instead of the occupier.
The following is a comparison of the Hearth-Tax
Returns with the census enumerations of recent times :
1670
1831
I9II
Places
bouses
house
persons
persons
222
Middleton township
62
50
286
. Barbon township
36
62
318
274
Casterton township*
33
58
302
428
Whole parish, except Mansergh
381
725
4153
3226
Kirkby Lonsdale township
102
318
1686
1524
Rural townships, except Man-
sergh * . . . .
249
407
2467
1702
Mansergh ....
—
35
232
160
* Allowance must be made for 186 persons in the population of
Casterton in 191 1 resident in the Clergy Daughters Institutions.
APPENDIX III
LISTS FROM THE BARBON ENFRANCHISEMENT DEED OF
JANUARY 17, I718
Schedule 1 : Customary tenants whose tenements were
enfranchised with the rents reserved by the enfranchise-
ment deed.
£ s. d.
Margaret Addison . . . . 7 10
Chr. Holme
15 61
John Atkinson, junr. .
15 6
Roger Moore
9 6
Robt. Place
10 6J
John Becke
4 81
Robt. Holme, junr.
II 4^
John Jackson
I 4
Robt. Holme, senr. .
I I 4h
John Ortt .
9
Wm. Dixon of Coulby .
12 7
Thos. Richardson
10 6J
Hy. Bainbridge .
17 lOl
Thos. Garnett, senr.
7 2i
Thos. Garnett, son of Edw.
13 II
Thos. Hammond
2
Wm. Dixon of Barbon .
3
Alice Waller
2
James Wadeson .
7 7
John Atkinson, senr. .
6 6J
John Sowermire .
4
Carried Forward
£9 5 8^
164
Barbon in 17 18
165
Brought Forward 9 5 8.1
Thos. Holme
8i
Eliz. Stainbanks.
2 I
John Rigg
EHz. Glover
3 7
2 9
Anihy. Reamy .
Alice Cragg
John Gamett
Thos. Gamett, junr.
I 7i
I II
I 12 10
14
Edm. Gamett
5 I
Thos. Dent
3 3
Wm. Hardy
Saml. Fawcett .
6 7
II
Ehz. Parker
2
James Garnett .
3 9
Thomas Herd
2 6
Bryan Watson .
James Harrison .
5 9
I II
Total [rejecting the odd halfpenny]
£15 4 2
Schedule 2 : Ancient free rents payable
Defore the deed
of enfranchisement and still reserved.
Joseph Gibson .
Tho. Dent
I s. d.
7
2 3
William Hardy .
Thos. Richardson
8
Anthony Reamy.
Eliz. Glover
\
\
Robt. Holme
\
James Harrison .
I
APPENDIX IV
GRANDCHILDREN OF GEORGE HARDY (1766-1832)
I. Children of William Hardy
1. Eliza (m. Robert Shaw), 1813-1903 : issue living.
2. William, 1820-1861 : had issue.
3. George, 1824-1892 : died without issue.
4. Charles, 1826-1911 : issue living.
5. Edward.
6. Mary (m. James Kimber), b. 1835 : issue hving.
II. Children of John Hardy and Mary {b. Read)
1. Robert Read, died 1832, aged 10.
2. Mary (m. Jean Frangois Macaire), 1824-1870: issue
living.
3. John Frederic, 1826-1888 : died unmarried.*
4. William Read, 1827-1894 : issue living.
5. Charles Friend, 1 829-1 883 : issue living.
III. Children of John Hardy and Ann {b. Whitaker)
1. Samuel Whitaker, 1835-1898 : issue living.
2. George Dalton, b. 1837 • issue living.
IV. Children of George Frederick Hardy and Sarah {b. Fallen)
1. Constance (m. Glascott Symes), 1836-88: issue living.
2. Matilda, 1836-1906 : died unmarried.
V. Daughter of Lewis Adam Hardy
Eleanor (m. Oram) : issue living.
* He was one of those Cambridge men who in 1857 cradled the
Alpine Club on the summit of the Finsteraarhorn (Peaks, Passes,
and Glaciers, ist Series).
166
INDEX
The references are to the pages. Abbreviatiotjs : b. =born, bap. =
baptised, bu. =buried, d. — died, m. =married. A date alone in
parenthesis refers to mention of a living person in a dated document.
Addison, Margaret, 164
— William, 161, 162
Aikrigg End, Aikrigg Green, 62
Alderbury, 115
Allen, Isabel, 48
Almondbury, 105, 109
Almonry Farm, 133
Alpine Club, 166
Appleby School, 112
Applegarth, Sir Robert, 29
Armitage, Sir John, 109
Arms and armour, 7, 31
Artillery Grounds, 152
Atkinson, Edward, 22
— John, 162, 164
— Robert, 161
Aumbry Farm, 133
Bainbridge (Bainbrigg), Henry, 164
John, 161, 162
Mr., 161
Thomas, 161
William, 161
Baines (Baynes), Edward, and wife,
27,34
James, 162
Jeremy, 162
Thomas, 161
Barbon beacon, 1 1
— beck, 30, 46 (and see Beckfoot)
— bridges, 30, 31
— chapel, 4, 30, 33, 34
— enfranchisement of statesmen,
13. 94> 95. 164, 165
Barbon fells, 98
— hearth-tax list, 76, 162
— manor, 6, 9, 10, 13, 21, 164, 165
— mill, 10, 13, 46
— poor householders, 27, 160
— tenants, 164, 165
— township or village, 4, 40, 46,
76, 163
Barkin Dale, II
Barnsley, 103
Barwick, John and Peter, 67
Bayliffe, Anthony, l6o
— John, 161
— Joseph, 161
— Robert, 162
— widow, 161, 163
Baynes. See Baines
Beck, John, 66, 160, 162, 164
Beckfoot, 30, 46, 47, 50-2, 77, 78,
92, 96, 97
Backside Hall, 44, 115
Beetham, 85, 115
Bellingham, Allan, 45
Benevolent Society, 157
Bethnal Green, 145, 147, 152-6
Bifrons, 141
Bilsington, 132
Bingley, Rebecca, b. Hardy, 105,
142, 158
Birchington, 133
Birkett, Robert, 162
Birksgate, 106, loS
Bishopsgate Street, 14S, 151
fire, 121
167
i68
Index
Bland, Christopher, i6i
— Edward, 163
Border peles, 90
— service, 7-13
— tenure, 5-8, 11-13
Borwick (Barwick) Hall, go
Bouskell (Buskell), Agnes, 31, 66
Bridget, 66
Edward, 160
Giles, 31
James, 161
Richard, 161
Thomas, 31, 67
Brabyn, Mr. , 34
Braffin, 116
Bridge Place, 141
Bridges, 30, 31
Briggs, Augustin, 100
— family of, 100, 129
— Grace, 128
— Henry, 121, 128, 129
— Hobart, 121, 128
— John, of the Lonsdale Magazine^
16, 157
— John, Rev., 100, 129, 157
— John, of the Post Office, 121, 128
— Joseph, of Liverpool, 128
— Joseph, Rev., 100, loi, 103-5,
128, 129
— Joseph, of Wakefield, 129
— Miss, m. Martin, 128
— Richard, 1 00
— Samuel, 129
— William, 128, 129
Brockbank, William, 73
Bronte, Charlotte, and her sisters,
92, 156, 157
Broome, Nicholas, 132
Brushfield Street, 151
Buchanan, George, 66, 71
Burrow, Anthony, 61
— Arthur, 62
— Robert, 61
Burton-in-Kendal, 45
Buskell. Ste Bouskell
Buxton, Thoniis Fowell, 157
Cambridge, Maud, Countess of, 69
— Richard, Earl of, 69, 70
Canterbury, Archbishop and Dean
and Chapter of, 132, 133, 130,
138
Carnforth, 33
Carpenters' Company, 124, 125
Casterton, hearth-tax list, 76, 162,
163
— manor and township, 4, 9, 24,
76, 163
Chapels of ease, 4
Charles I, 12, 104
Charlesworth family, 158
— Harriet, b. Hardy, 56, 14S, 158
— Thomas, 56, 158
Chelsea, 108
Christian names, alternation of, 57,
58
Christ's College, Cambridge, 115,
116, 140
Christ's Hospital, 145, 147, 151,
152, 158
Civil War, II, 38, 66, 71, Si
CHfford, Maud, 69
— Thomas, Lord, 69
Clothworkers' Company, 1 28, 131
Cockermouth, 11
Code Street, 152
Cole, William, 71, 81
Conder, Edward {1608), 49
— Edward, k.s.a., 50, 86
— Joan, b. Hardy, 50
— John, 37, 38
— Richard, 50
— family, 76
Copeland, 11
Cowan Bridge, 85, 92, 98, 156
Cozens-Hardy, Sir H. H., 42
Cragg, Alice, 165
Cranbrook, Earl of, 42
Index
169
Crosby, Robert, 160
— William, 34
Crosfield, James, 25
Crown manors, 8, 12, 24
Ciimberworth, 107
Cumming (Commingc), Edmond,
119
Edward, 1 19
Elizabeth, 56, 99, iiS, 119,
127, 142
James, 1 19
Robert, 127, 139, 142
Curtain Road and the Curtain,
148-51
Curteis, Esther, m. Hardy. Set
Hardy
— Miss (m. Papillon), 145
— Thomas, father and son, 135-8
— Thomas Sackville, 138, 139
Dacres, Lord, 11
Dallam Tower, 85, 86
Dalton, place-name, 144
— Mary, m. Hardy. See Hardy
Davenport, Mrs., 159
Davye, Nicholas, 160
Dawson, Roger, 162
Deal, 156
Death's part, 37
Dent, 35
— John, 161
— Thomas, 95, 162, 165
Denton, Robert, 162
Dickonson^ George, 160
Ditchside, 149-51
Dixon, William, 164
Dodghson (Dodgson, Dodshone),
Edmond, 163
Sir Robert, 29
William, 162
Dorset, Duke of, 136, 144
D'Oyley, Robert, loi, 102
Dwelling-house, the statesman's,
16-20, 67, 86, 92
East Sutton, 132
Edward HI, 69
— IV, 69
Excise Office, 1 14, 144-7
Faucitt (Fawcett), James, 160
Matthew, 61
Robert, 161
Samuel, 165
Thomas, 80, 162, 163
Filmer family, 132
Fishmongers Company, 1 21
Flasby (Flastbee), Elizabeth, m.
Hardy. See Hardy
family, 84, 98
hamlet, 84
Fleming, Catherine, 85
— Sir Daniel, 85
Flodden, battle of, 10, 11, 85
Fords across the Lune, 47
Foxcroft, John, 162
Fowler, John, 162
Funerals, 33, 37
Garden, widow, 162
Gargrave, 84
Garnett, Edmond, 80, 162, 165
— Edward, 162
— James, 165
— John, 162, 165
— Miles, 162
— Richard, 162
— Robert, 162
— Thomas, 25, 95, 162, 164, 165
— widow, 163
— William, 162
— family, 97
Garsdale, William, 26, 28
Garthorne (Gaythorne, Gaw-
thorne). Manor, 45
Gathorne, Edward, 45
— Eliza, 44
— Isabel, b. Preston, 45
— John, 45
I70
Index
Gathorne, Miles, 44, 45
— Richard, 44, 45
— Sarah, 45
Gathorne-Hardy, Gathorne, 42
Gawthorpe, 9, 10
George Street, 152, 153
Gibbonson, Thomas, 162
Gibson of Whelprigg, 14, 95, 116
— John, 160
— Joseph, 95, 165
— Leonard, 22
— Nicholas, 25
— Robert, 160
— Sir Robert, Tp
— Samuel, 76, 162
Gilpin, John, 148
Glover, Isabel, 21
— Elizabeth, 95, 165
Godsalve, Thomas, 114
— Miss, m. Mawdesley, 1 16
Goselin (Goseling), Anthony, 161
Edward, 161
James, 162
Richard, 161
William, 162
Green, Mrs., 159
Grimeshill. Set Moore
Groom, Fanny, 158
Guy, II
Hackney, 155, 156
Halstead, 135, 137
Hammond, Thomas, 164
Hanmer, Mrs., 127
— Maria, 127
— Thomas Hardy, 127
Hardi, Clement le, 41, 42
— (le Hardi, Hardie, Hardye,
Hardy), the name, 5, 41, 42
— family in Jersey, 42
Barbon and Kirkby Lonsdale,
4, 5. IS. 41. 44
Norfolk, 42
Wessex, 41
Hardy, Agnes, 26-8, 34, 57, 6c, 8
— Alfred, 109
— Alice, 22, 60
— Ann, b. Whitaker, 158, 166
— Anna Christiana, 143, 159
— Anthony, 27, 36, 50-2, 56-60,
63, 71, 160
— Benjamin, 106
— Betty, m. North. See North
— Charles, 166
— Charles Friend, 166
— Charles Marius, 106
— Christabel, 34, 56, 71, 79, 81
— Christian, 124, 159
— Constance, m. Symes, 166
— Edmund (d. 1571), 5, 27,
56-60, 72
wife of, 27, 57
(d. 1680), 76, 162
— Edward, of Beckfoot, 56, 73,
79-81, 83, III
— Edward, of Cumberworth, 106,
107
of Sevenoaks, 56, 97, 99,
118-20, 134-9. 142, 145
of Shepley Hall, I08
(1594), 22
(1605), 24
(bu. 1692), 83
(grandson of George of the
Excise Office), 166
— Eleanor, m. Oram, 166
— Eliza, 148, 158
m. Shaw, 166
— Elizabeth, m. Cumming. See
Camming
b. Kemp, 158
b. Flasby, 56, 84, 99
b. Middleton, 56, 60, 61, 63
(1605), 26
(bap. 1606), 71
— Ellen, 76
— Esther, b. Curteis, 135, 136,
139. 145 .
Index
171
Hardy, Frances Catherina, 141, 142
— Gathorne, 42
— Geoffrey, 28, 35, 36, 160
— George, of the Excise Office,
56. 139. M3-57, 166
(bu. 1599), 33
(bap. 1725), 93. "8
(b. 1789), 147. 158
(d. 1892), 166
— George Dalton, 166
— George Frederick, 56, 148, 158,
166
— Hannah Maria, 144, 148, 159
— Harriet, m. Charlesworth. See
Charlesworth
m. Kingsley. See Kingsley
(b. 1793). 148. 158
(b. 1798), 148, 158
— Helen, 60
— Henry, 124, 139, 159
— Henry J., 159
— Isabel, b. Gathorne, 44
b. Glover, 21
b. Read, 56, 8i, 84, 93, 94
(1605), 26
(bap. 1608), 71
— Isabella (1712-62), 118, I19
(d. 1796), 126, 139
— James, 5, 21-5
— Jennet, 27, 34
b. Stockdale, 49
— Joan, 22
m. Conder, 50
— John, of Bridge Place, 119, 137,
140-2
of Horsforth, 43, 44
of Kirkburton, 56, 83, 84.
99-105, 129, 141
of Leadenhall Street, 56, 97,
99, 118-27, 138, 139, 142, 159
of Penistone, 106, 108
Recorder of Leeds, 44
(d. 1571), S. 30, 58, 59
(1571). S8, 59
(1579). 32
Hardy, John (1594), 22
(d. 1598), 6, 32,33
(1605), 24
(d. 161 1), 26, 28
(bap. 161S), 52
(d. 1623), 49-51
(1635). 51. 52. 59
(b. 1751). 143
(d. 1882), 56, 145-7, 152,
155, 158, 166
— John Frederic, 166
— Joseph, of Kirkburton, 106
of Knole, 56, 143, 144
of Sutton Valence, 56, 93, 95,
97, 99, 118-20, 127-34, 142, 143
— Julius, 106
— Leonard, 5
— Lewis Adam, 56, 148, 159, 166
— Margaret, 48, 49, 51, 71, 77
— Maria, 127, 139
— Martha or Mary, 106
— Mary, b. Dalton, 56, 144, 146,147
m. Kimber, 166
m. Macaire, 166
b. Mokeson, 10 1
b. Read, 156, 158, 166
widow of Joseph, 56, 131,
134, 139
— Mary or Martha, 106
— Mary Ann, 148, 158
— Matilda, 166
— Matilda Elizabeth, 143
— Peter, 5, 26, 34, 35
— Rebecca, m. Bingley. 5'f«Bingley
— Richard, 5, 21, 24, 25, 76
— Robert, 32, 34, 49. 58, 59. 76.
77, 162 V
— Robert Read, 166
— Roland, 5. 32, 46-52, 57-9
— Samuel Whitaker, 166
— Sarah, b. Patten, 158, 166
— Stephen, 5, 32, 49
— Thomas, of Barbon, 5
of Birksgate (d. 1777), 105,
106, 142
172
Index
Hardy, Thomas, of Birksgate (d.
1836), 106-8
(d. 1848), 107, 108
of Horsforth, 43, 44
of Leadenhall Street, 56, 97,
99, 118, 123-7, 138, 139, 142, 159
of Mirfield, 56, 83, 84, 100,
109, no, 140, 141
novelist, 41
(d. 1676), 56, 79-81
(b. I7S3), 143
(bap. 1770), 124
— Thomas Flashy, 126, 127, 139
— Sir Thomas Masterman, 41
— William, of Barbon, senr., 51,
56, 59, 71-80, 163
ofEastwell, 140, 141
of Horsforth, 43
of Kirkburton, 105
of Park House, 56, 81-99,
118, 129, 141, 157, 165
(bap. 1538), 5
(160S), 26
(d. 1697), 76, 78
(d. 1699), 72, 78
(b. 1761), 143
(b. 1719, dead 1796), 99, "8,
"9. 139
(d. 1861), 166
(d. 1862), 56, 147. 154. 158,166
— William Read, 166
Harling, Christopher, 25, 163
— Edmond, 163
— Edward, 162, 163
— John, 161
Harrison family, 47, 48, 96
— James, 95, 161, 165
Headcorn, 132
Hearn Street, 151
Hearth-tax, 75-7, 161-3
Hebblethwaite, James, 16 1
— John, 161
Heirlooms, 34
Herd, Thomas, 165
Heriots, 7
Heme, Sir William, 145, 151
Heversham, 85, 112
Hinde, Thomas, 163
— William, 162
Hobart, Sir Henry, 12
Hodghson, Richard, 162
— Robert, 162
Hogarth, Richard, 116
— William, 116, 117
Holme family, 96, 97
— graveship, 103
— House, 119
— Alice, 96
— Christopher, 162, 164
— Elizabeth, b. Huck, 96
— Henry, 161
-J.,96
— Robert, 95, 162, 164, 165
— Thomas, 96, 97, 162, 165
Holt, 121
Holywiell Lane, 149
— Mount, 148-51
— Priory, 151
Hornby, 10, 40
Horsforth, 43
Houghton, Thomas, 162
Hoxton Square, 153, 154
Hoyle, Henry, 75
Huck, Elizabeth, m. Holme, 96
— WiUiam, 96
Huddersfield, 103
Hutton, Old, 45
— Roof, 9
— William, 55, 85
Ingleton, 10, 37, 38, 98, 99
Ingmire, 26, 67, 116
Ireland, 42-4
Jackson, Christopher, 163
— John, 22, 164
— Robert, 162
— widow, 163
— William, 25
Index
173
Jacobites at Kendal, 118
James VI and I, 11-13
Johnson, Henry, 163
Kemp family, 145
— Elizabeth. See Hardy
— Thomas, 154
Kendal, barony of, 8, 21
— town of, II, 40, 118
Kendale, Richard, 160
Keswick, 1 1
Kiniber, Mary, b. Hardy, 166
Kingsley, Chrissy, 159
— Harriet, b. Hardy, 56, 134, 139,
143. 159
— William, 134
Kirkburton, 100-9
— school, 100
Kirk by Lonsdale bridge, 31
church, 4, 68
churchyard, 98
parish, 3, 4, 8, 9, 75, 163
parish registers, 4, 5
school, 32, 75, 112, 114, 115,
120, 140
town, 3, 4, 39, 40
township, 3, 75, 163
Knole, 138, 144
Lambe, William, 130, 134
Lancaster, 3, 40, 103
Lascelles family, 9
Latymer, Lady, 69
Leadenhall Street, 121, 122, 126
Leek, 84, 85, 92
Lee, Lord, 12
Leeds, 98
Levens, 45, 85
Lidget chapel, 108
Lindsay, George, 49
— Margaret (formerly Hardy, b.
Allen), 48, 49
Loose, 128
Lowther, Robert, 37, 38
Lune river. See Bridges, Fords
Lupton, 60, 62, 75
Macaire, Jean Franfois, 166
— Mary, b. Hardy, 166
Manchester, 107
Manors. See Border tenure
Mansergh family and Hall, 44, 48
— Hall houses, 48-50, 76
— township, 4, 76, 163
Manzer, Bryam, 162
Martin, Dennis, 128
Mawtlesley, Margaret, b. Godsalve,
116
Medcalfe, Dr., in
Medlton. Read Middleton
Middleton chapel, 6S
— family, 44, 60, 63-5, 69
— Hall, 65-8, 75
— hearth-tax list, 75, 161
— manor, 63, 65
— township, 3, 64, 75, 163
— (Medlton, Mydlton), Adam, 29, 61
— Ann, b. Tunstall, 68
— Arthur, 32, 37, 62
— Benjamin, 65
— Christopher, 66
— Edmund, 62
— Edward, of Dent, 35
of Middleton Hall, 114
— Elizabeth, m. Hardy. See Hardy
— Sir Geoffrey, 67, 69
— George, j6, 61
— Isabel, 61
m. Hardy, 60, 61
m. Willan, 35
b. Musgrave, 69
— Joan, 61
— John, of Aikrigg End, 36, 37, 62
of Lupton, 32, 36, 61, 62, 75
of Middleton Hall, 9, 38,
66, 68, 75, 161
— Richard, 35, 66
— Sibell, 35
— Stephen, 61, 62
174
Index
Middleton, Thomas, 69
— William, 60, 61, 75, 163
Colonel, 66
Middleton-Moore. See Middleton
family
Milnthorpe, 40
Mirfield, 109, no
Mokeson family, lOi
— Mary, m. Hardy, loi
Monkton, 133
Moore, Alice, 27
— Eliza, 44
— family, 44, 66
— James, 161
— John, 44, 161, 162
— Joseph, 162
— Mr., 161
— Richard, 34
— Robert, 162
— Roger, 164
— widow, 75, 161
— William, 25
Morehouse, H. J., and family, 108
Musgrave, Alice, b. Plantagenet,
69, 70
— Elizabeth, 70
— Isabel, 69
— Sir Philip, 67
— Sir Richard, 69
— Sir Thomas, 69
Musicians' Company, 120, I2I, 125
Nelson, widow, 162
Newby Hall, 86
Nicholson, Sarah, b. Gathorne, 45
Noble, Mr., 120, 140
Noddall, 10
Non-residenceof theclergy, 133, 134
North, Benjamin, 105
— Betty, b. Hardy, 105, 142
Norton Folgate, 148, 154-7
Norwich School, 100
Old Hutton, 45
Old Town, 48
Oram, Eleanor, b. Hardy, 166
Ortt, John, 164
Otlay, Samuel, 162
Otway family, 10, 44, 115, 116
— Geoffrey, 10, 49
— Humphrey, 116
— Sir John, 67
— Nicholas, 76, 162
— Samuel, 80
— Thomas, 76, 116, 161
Bishop, 115
dramatist, 116
Papillon, David, 138, 144, 145
Parish registers of Kirkby Lons-
dale, 4, 5
Park House, 84-93, 9^. '57
Parker, Elizabeth, 165
— Thomas, 162
Parsivell, William, 73
Patten, Sarah. See Hardy
Payne family, 132
Pele-towers, 90
Pembroke College, 143
Pews, 35, 91
Pierson, Symond, 161
Pill, 127
Place, Robert, 95, 164
Plantagenet, Alice, 69, 70
— Richard, 69, 70
Plurality of benefices, 133, 134
Poor-box, 29, 34
Populations, 163
Pratt, Josiah, 157
Prayers for the dead, 29
Preston, Isabel, 45
Queen's College, Oxford, 113, 115
Read, Agnes, 81
— Charlotte, 155
— Christopher, 81
— Isabel, m. Hardy, 56, 81
— Mary, m. Hardy. See Hardy
— Thomas, 73
— William, 155, 156, 158
Index
175
Reamy, Anthony, 95, 165
Redman (Readman, Kedmayne)
family, 37, 38
Richardson, James, 160, 162
— Thomas, 95, 164, 165
— William, l6i
Richmond Archdeaconry records,
15, 16, 29
Rider, Sir Thomas, 132
Riding, John, i6i
Rigg, John, 165
— Roland, 25
Rigmaden, 35, 47, 66
Roads, 30, 31, 39-41
Robinson, Henry, 104
Rokeby, Mrs., 159
RoUinson, George, 79
— William, 25
Ronaldson (Rondson), William, 25
Royalists in Kirkby Lonsdale, 38, 66
Ruecroft, James, 162
Ruskin, John, 98
St. Agnes Clear, 149
St. Dionis', Backchurch, 138
St. Peter's on Cornhill, 124-6
Salle, 100
Schools in Westmorland, III-16
Sedbergh school, 115, 116
Sedgwick (Sigswick), Adam, 58
— Isabel, b. Hardy, 26
— Richard, 26
Selme, Thomas, 73
Settle, 40, 98, 103
Sevenoaks benefice, 136, 138
— school, 135, 136
Shakespeare, Mrs. William, 106
Shaw, Eliza, b. Hardy, 166
— Robert, 166
Sheffield, 103, 121
Shelley, chapel at, 107
Shepley Hall, 108
Shoreditch, 147-9
Shuttleworth accounts, 6, 9
— Lord, 9
Shuttleworth, Sir Richard, 6, 9, 10,
49
— Richard, Esij., 9, 13, 76, 95, 162
Silkstone, 107
Skipton, 40, 103
Smarlhwaite, William, 161
Smith, John, 163
Smithills, 10
Sowermire, John, 164
Spencer, George, 161
Spencer-Stanhope family, 43
SpilaUields, 152, 156, 157
Spittal Square, 155, 157
Stainbanks, Elizabeth, 165
Stanhope, John, 43
Staveley, 30
Stockdale (Stockdall, Stoctell)
family, 36, 48, 49
— Christopher, 48, 49
— Geoft'rey, 36
— George, 49
— James, 48
— Jennet, 49
— John, 48, 49, 114
— Leonard, 30, 32, 48, 49
— Matthew, 32, 58
— Mrs., 48
— William, 32
Strafford, Earl of, 44
Styth, Francis, 163
Sutton Valence school, church,
etc., 128-32, 15s
Sydenham, 108
Symes, Constance, b. Hardy, 166
— Glascott, 166
Taylor, John, I41
Tenant-right, 5, 6, 12
Terry Bank, 48-50, 86
Thornbecke, John, 161
— Christopher, 161
Thornton-in-Lonsdale, 38, 84, 9S,
119
Thurland Castle, 85, 91
Thurstonland, 105
176
Index
Towers (Border peles), 90
Townson, Robert, 22
Town Sutton. ^tfarfSutton Valence
Trant, Mr., 120
Tunstal, Ann, 68
— Brian, 85
Tunstal parish and church, 84, 9 1 , 92
Tunstal Training School, 156
Turner, Richard, 162
Tyrergh Bank. Set Terry Bank
Underley Park, 47, 66, 98
Union Street, 151
Ustonson, Richard, 160
— Robert, 33, 73
Vaughan family, 9
Venner, Samuel, 132
Wadeson(Waidson), James, 80, 162
Wages, 28
Wakefield, 100, 129
Walker, Christopher, 161
— Miles, 161
— Philip, 161
Waller, Alice, 164
Walworth, 108
Ward, George, i6i
— Henry, 66
— John, 35, 161
— Thomas, 161
Warton, 33
Watson, Bryan, 165
Wesleyan Methodists, 107
Westhouse, 84
Whaler Chapel, 157
Whelprigg, 14
Whitaker, Ann, m. Hardy. See
Hardy
— Samuel, 158
Whitehead, Helen, 26, 28
— Robert, 162
Whitehead, Roland, 160
Whitfield, Henry, 135, 136
Whittington parish, 94
— Thomas, 161
Widow-right, 6, 7, 21
Wilkinson, Robert, 124
Willan, Christopher, 35
— Isabel, b. Middleton, 35
William de Worfat, 55
Williamson, John, 22
Willow Walk, 149
Wilson of Underley, 67
— Daniel, 86
— Edward, 85, 86, 112
— Henry, 66, 115
— James, 161
— John, 160, 161, 162
— Thomas, 115
— William, 160
— William Carus, 156
Winchilsea, Earl of, 140
Witton (Wytton), Christopher, 162
— Edmund, 162
— Rebecca, 162
— Thomas, 163
— wife of, 160
Woodchurch, 133
Woodhouse, George, 79, 162
— Isabel, 79
Woolbeding, 1 16
Wooldale, 108
Worfat, William de, 55
Worship Street, 148-50
Wraton, 94
Wrotham, 136
Wytton. Read Witton
Yealand, li
York, 40
— Duke of, 69
Younger sons of statesmen, 39-41
WUXIAM BRENDON AND SON, L'l'O.
PRINTHRS, PLVl.IOUTH